It’s middle of May and we’re still grinding away on the tarpon! Fishing overall has been OK I’ll say. Most days we’ve still been having to work a fair bit at it to get a handful of bites. Though conditions have been fairly good overall now as it seems we’re starting to get somewhat calmer consistent weather out of the southeasterly direction for wind. The forecast right now is 10mph and under for the foreseeable future so that should be a good thing! Bait has started to get a little tougher so I’m buying it when I can if I know I have trips coming up and we’re catching it as best we can too to keep up with our needs. I only fished one day last week on Wednesday but we had a decent day getting about 5 bites I believe. We had 3 fish up on the wind-on leader though weren’t able to get any rolled over for pictures. Jumped a couple off, had a hook break on one, and a couple others swam into the bridge. Just one of those days but still decent action and lots of fun. We had a good amount of mutton snapper bites as well which was cool too. Capt. Stephen ran the boat today (Saturday) and just fished a last minute half day this morning but he had a couple tarpon bites and got one on the wind-on leader as mentioned but he got tangled up in the bridge when they were trying to get her rolled over. But a good catch none the less along with some nurse sharks and muttons he said too. There were still plenty of fish down at the bridges and I think we’ll have good shots at them for a bit longer here and the nice thing is there hasn’t been a ton of pressure. A lot of guys are doing other things because fishing has been a little tougher for the tarpon. Though with my boat we fish hard using the trolling motor and sophisticated electronics so we can pretty much always find the fish just a matter of getting them to bite. Capt. Stephen is now available to run the boat any day with exception to Thursdays and Sundays, and he’ll do evening trips as well any evening but Sundays. I am still taking bookings on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays though if Steve gets booked first he’ll take the day. I have the 29th, 30th and 31st open myself this month and will likely be taking a few taking a few June trips next week though as mentioned Capt. Stephen will book a June trip any time now. Give me a shout if you want to get something on the books for June I’m likely only going to fish a handful of trips and then let Capt. Stephen run the boat the rest of the time.
Capt. Rick Stanczyk
Instagram: @richardstanczyk
Facebook: Islamorada Tarpon Fishing
YouTube: Bud n’ Mary’s Marina
