Well got out one last day here and am out of town for a couple weeks now until Mid July. But the winds finally laid down over the weekend here as it blew a good 20mph+ all week last week. Between that and all the rain the week before, the backountry tarpon that we had found a couple weeks ago still hadn’t shown up real thick back there yet. So we stuck to the bridges today. It was calm and very hot but luckily we had semi-overcast conditions for part of the day to help with the heat. We actually saw a good number of tarpon around all day long. They weren’t pulling us out of the boat though. But we fished down around one of the bridges I’ve been fishing lately and we caught a couple tarpon and jumped one more, plus had another good zip or two that were possibly tarpon. That was all from 7 AM till about 10:30 AM. We also had a few big jack crevelles and mutton snappers so all in all it was good action with some tarpon mixed in. After that though things died down and we went a good hour or more without much of anything happening. I decided to run back up near home and fish the local channels which I hadn’t really done all year. Sure enough we found some tarpon in an area where Capt. Steve had pointed me too and said he had some luck there a few days ago. We ended up catching two more tarpon on our last 4 baits! Good way to finish for sure. No facegrabs today we came close a few times but the fish were just being stubborn and we had one early on get eaten by a bull shark which hadn’t happened much lately but goes to show there are still a few around to worry about. But great day we ended up catching four tarpon and jumped off one other, with possibly a couple other zips but who knows what they were.
Again as mentioned I’m out of town now for a bit but Capt. Steve and Capt. Trent will be running the show. They’ve still been getting on tarpon lately and half day trips are totally doable if you don’t want to deal with the heat. As we approach July I’m hoping the backcountry tarpon fishing will turn back on… I think it will once the weather stabilizes which it seems to be doing now. July is often one of my favorite months for those resident fish… much less fishing pressure and of course in the backcountry there are shots at snook, tripletail, redfish, and more. Give me a shout if you want to get out. I may personally have some days available towards the end of July but won’t know until a couple weeks.
Capt. Rick Stanczyk
Instagram: @richardstanczyk
Facebook: Islamorada Tarpon Fishing
YouTube: Bud n’ Mary’s Marina
