Got out with a group trip the last two days my good customer Gerald from Las Vegas and his crew of builders had 5 boats booked for two days. They come a couple times of year often in the late spring for big tarpon and then in the offseason around now. Fishing honestly was a little tough yesterday we focused more on snook and fishing with our light rods with pilchards. Falling tides all day long mostly. I had Jack on the boat and we picked away at snook early on. But it was about a fish or maybe not in every ‘good’ spot you hit. No big rallies and lots of moving around and time to invest for a handful of bites. We switched to tarpon a little after that and we jumped two fish back to back! Couldn’t keep ’em buttoned which was frustrating. We caught a tripletail and big redfish after that and a few more snook, but finished the day with a nice juvenile tarpon so all in all not bad just really had to work for it. But the whole group of boats had tough fishing just one of those days nothing seemed to be super happy. Today we focused more in larger tarpon and we found a school first thing. Same school I’ve fished a couple times in the last few weeks it’s not a lot of fish, but they are biting and there aren’t a lot of ‘pickers’ messing with the baits which makes it nice. We jumped a tarpon and then next stop we hooked two back to back. Landed them both and got pictures which was great! After that we caught a handful of snook and a goliath grouper, then saw a few more tarpon free jumping and busting in another area. Again not a huge school of fish but we got lined up and put our baits out and boom we were hooked up in about 2 minutes with a nice 80 lb fish! Awesome fight for Jack and good opportunity for pictures again. So all in all a great day.
I’m hoping next week the big school of tarpon may show back up. Who knows possibly with the incoming tidal scenario things will be much different. But I think we’ll still get a good fall push once the bait runs start it’s almost October and that is the time usually. Have some days open in October so give me a shout if you want to get set up!
Capt. Rick Stanczyk
Instagram: @richardstanczyk
Facebook: Islamorada Tarpon Fishing
YouTube: Bud n’ Mary’s Marina
