Got out with Zack and Connor today for some tarpon fishing. Caught bait yesterday so we had plenty, including some good live ones that lived well overnight. They were doing the ‘spins’ which we’ve been seeing bait do this year… just weirdly spinning around when they get stressed. But otherwise they seem to be alright. Some kind of neurotoxin or something I think. We fished the bridges as we saw a lot of tarpon around them last week though they didn’t bite all that well then. Today was much better though. We had weak falling tide late morning so I thought it might be kinda tough fishing, but sure enough they bit well from the get go even with last of the incoming tide slacking up. We hooked a fish we lost, jumped one off, then caught one that unfortunately proceeded to get eaten by a 500 lb hammerhead! The hammerhead bumped our trolling motor hard and broke our prop! Which was kind of funny because last week I had a prop break on the trolling motor randomly and I think that’s only the 2nd time that’s happened. I was going to put the anchor out after that but I decided to just run back in and get a spare prop off our other motor since the tide was slacking up anyways. Sure enough we got back and the tide was just starting to fall good. We got bit right away again and pulled off a fish, then jumped around a few times and then boom boom boom we caught another fish, pulled another one off, then caught one more – those last two we got up to the boat for good pictures. Anyways good day we landed 3 fish and had 4 or 5 others on. Hopefully fishing stays like that I’ll be back at it tomorrow so we’ll see!
Capt. Rick Stanczyk
Instagram: @richardstanczyk
Facebook: Islamorada Tarpon Fishing
YouTube: Bud n’ Mary’s Marina
