Got out for my Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday season trips this week. Weather was a bit windy overall though Monday started out nice and it started blowing around mid-day mostly out of the East which isn’t a bad direction for where we were fishing. Tuesday the wind had stayed blowing and slightly more Southeast which made it a tad rougher on the oceanside but not too terrible for the Contender Bay Boat I’m in, and Wednesday was more of the same of that. Fishing was really good it was about the best I’ve seen it so far this season. Monday we started out with the tide rolling in and again slightly calmer wind. It was action from the get-go I had return customer Ken and his son and neighbor. They got on tarpon from the start and we ended up landing six I think. A big hammerhead shark got the first one unfortunately. The bite was strong we ended up having a dozen bites or so at least so that was good to see. The later morning/afternoon bites were all ‘short’ bites though they kept grabbing baits and spitting them out pretty quick. Tuesday a little slower but still pretty good I had Greg down from Maine. Our first 4 stops we ended up hooking three fish and catching all three. The first one we got to the boat for pictures which was great – sometimes that is a hard feat especially when you are fishing in 20 knot winds and only have one guy on the boat. The next ones the first we broke off boatside and the other we got leader on several times but eventually he made his way into the bridge and broke off. After that we had to work at it a bit more the tarpon got a little finicky. But we kept moving and seemed about every move with a fresh bait out if we were in a pile of fish we could encourage a bite. But we weren’t able to keep many on the hook after that. I was joking with Greg how lucky we were to get that first nice fish up boat side like that and how it doesn’t happen that easily all the time… now he knows! But still a great day I think we had seven bites or so and caught three. Wednesday it was howling 20+ knots and a little more southeast again. Definitely about the windiest it’s been for me lately. But the Contender Bay Boat handled it beautifully. Fishing was decent but we had to work at it. We ended up hooking a big one right off the bat for T that we battled for an hour but we did manage to roll over and get great pictures so that was cool. Then soon after that Bob hooked one we lost in the bridge after a bit. After that a bit of a dry spell we hopped around and it was difficult with the wind trying to keep the boat in place, but we hooked a couple nurse sharks and then finally after a couple hours and several moves we got another tarpon. A smaller one for Bob that we got to the boat but right as we were going to grab him a shark got after him so we broke him off but unfortunately he wasn’t able to get away from the shark though he tried his best and we tried to bump the shark away with our boat. After that we ended up having a few more bites some that we missed and lost another one in the bridge. So overall productive day with a half dozen bites or so and two landed fish… not bad for a really windy one.
Anyways that’s it for me this week. Tarpon season is in full swing here in mid April. Capt. Steve and Capt. Trent have some days here and there, plus those evening trips are often available more short notice. If the weather is nice and you wanna get after it, give me a shout and we’ll see if we can get you set up!
Capt. Rick Stanczyk
Instagram: @richardstanczyk
Facebook: Islamorada Tarpon Fishing
YouTube: Bud n’ Mary’s Marina
