Well got out today for a tarpon bridge fishing session finally. As many of you know I’ve cut back on my personal guiding and have just been fishing a handful of days here & there. However now I am going to be fishing mondays, tuesdays, and wednesdays for the next few months strictly for tarpon. This coincides with the best bridge tarpon fishing of the season. Today was my first day around the bridges and we had some epic fishing! I had my regular customers Chris and Thiago who have tarpon fished with me for 4 or 5 years now every year. The bite was on pretty much all morning. We had a nice incoming tide and the seaweed wasn’t too bad. We hooked a fish in the first 5 minutes that we landed and got pictures of and proceeded to get a bite just about everywhere we stopped after that, not waiting much more than 15 minutes or so for any bites. Mostly all tarpon too I think we ended up getting 5 to the boat and broke off a couple more. The sharks got bad too unfortunately we had one fish get eaten and after that we willingly broke a couple off that were getting chased before the sharks ate them. That at least gives them a fighting chance when they are full of adrenaline to get away. Anyways about mid day around 11:30 the tide began to quit and I gave Chris the option to call it a 3/4 day since I didn’t really think it was going to be worthwhile to sit there through the slack afternoon tide. So we headed back after that. Anyways awesome fishing and good to see so many fish locally around Islamorada. Capt. Stephen who is going to be running the boat for me some rode along today so he got to really see first hand how I like to bridge fish and particularly how I use my trolling motor and electronics to assist in the fishing. I have another trip booked tomorrow he’ll be coming along on and he’s already got a few trips on the book for later this month.
Capt. Rick Stanczyk
Instagram: @richardstanczyk
Facebook: Islamorada Tarpon Fishing
YouTube: Bud n’ Mary’s Marina
