Well the wind went back to more southeasterly and let up a lot making it nice and calm today. Much better than the more Westerly wind we had the last couple of days. I had John who works with Pelagic Gear from Texas for the day. Tarpon was on his list so we tried to make it happen. Bait was nice and easy for us. We looked for tarpon in a couple spots early, but didn’t see a whole lot. So we checked another area and nothing in the first stop there, but the next stop we did see a few. We got set up and first bait out John hooked and caught a nice 35 lber! Some large blacktips kept us busy after that and we jumped 1 more tarpon. We moved and got around a few more tarpon, after a few sharks we jumped 1 more and then John got a 20 lber tarpon to the leader for a technical release. After that things slowed down so we switched gears. Hit some spots for snook/reds and it was productive. No big swarms of fish but we probably tried a half dozen spots and all of them had a handful of reds. We did hook up 3 snook too but unfortunately couldn’t keep any of them buttoned. After that we ran to another area as some weather was starting to dissipate. We had more shark action but then saw some tarpon show and soon John had another tarpon on! Got this one boatside for some good pictures. After that we had some more sharks. Had a couple big groups of tarpon go by but no response out of them. It was time to head in after that but all in all a great day for John catching his first 3 tarpon, 15 or so reds, plenty of sharks, and just missing the Backcountry slam losing a few snook. I’m off on vacation tomorrow will be back fishing the Sunday after this one. Hope the fish have a chance to settle in while I’m gone! 3 for 5
Capt. Rick Stanczyk
Instagram: @richardstanczyk
Facebook: Islamorada Tarpon Fishing
