Well March is almost over! I’ve been fishing this week and last week we were away from Spring Break. It was a good week to be away as I heard we had another couple of mild cold fronts which of course the tarpon did not care for. Plus the traffic was insane as they were dealing with wildfires closing down the stretch coming into the Keys. So I wasn’t sorry to miss dealing with all of that! This week I fished Monday, Tuesday, and today (Thursday 3/27/2025). The wind calmed down earlier in the week with a light east breeze so it got to be more ideal better conditions. Monday we went out back and found a few fish in the backcountry but not the big numbers we normally expect. It took a minute to find them as well they weren’t just jumping and flopping all over, I had to stop in a few spots and finally saw one roll and then we started seeing them on the machine. We had a good hour we were in them and jumped a nice fish but he didn’t stay hooked. Caught some sharks and then headed back towards Islamorada. Near home we found some more fish in the local channels but no bites out of them and we had a pretty weak tide which didn’t help. Tuesday we decided to just stay near town and we found some fish in the channels by home early on. They did not respond but they were rolling around pretty good as it was slick calm. We did catch some jacks and sharks. After an hour or so we gave the bridges a try and there were some fish around there but they did not cooperate though we caught more jacks. Then we tried near home again for the last hour and low and behold after the tide changed we did hook into 3 tarpon but unfortunately none of them stayed buttoned for us. But kept our head in the game and got our shots which is all you can do. So Thursday it was the exact opposite we had our 3 bites early in the first hour. We caught one nice tarpon on a live bait to start the day. Then we were about to leave that area but we marked a huge school of tarpon and I set up and got baits out fast. Sure enough we hooked a double header! But unfortunately one threw the hook immediately and the other we got wrapped up in a lobster ball and pulled the hook trying to dislodge it. The rest of the day we tried the bridges again and got eaten by jacks and got a few sharks but that was it for the tarpon action.
I’m hopeful we’ll have a good april, may, and maybe june as it was a bit of a slow start with the tarpon this year. Though maybe they haven’t been ‘beaten up’ too bad and will be happier later in the year. You have to stay positive, right? We’ll see… April is around the corner and that traditionally starts the ‘prime time’ for tarpon here and I think as long as we don’t get any more cold fronts that should be the case. I’ll be back at it next week if you want to book a trip check us out on Vally or shoot me an email!
Capt. Rick Stanczyk
Instagram: @richardstanczyk
Facebook: Islamorada Tarpon Fishing
YouTube: Bud n’ Mary’s Marina
