We’re into June and it’s definitely summer time! We just had a day of torrential rain I think we got about 6 months worth of rain in 24 hours. I know they said Plantation Key had 8 inches which is wild. We needed it though and hopefully it will be a good thing for the fishing overall. So how’s the tarpon fishing been? Well it’s definitely improved overall compared to the slower April we had. I’ve been finding some good fish in the normal backcountry areas we fish and we had luck with them this week after the day of crazy rain, and a few days last week as well. Haven’t had a whole lot of opportuntities for good pictures as they’ve been a lot of smaller 15-30 lb fish, and just not staying on the hook well or jumping off next to the boat. But we had good action last week catching 3 for 6 one day, 1 for 3 another day, and the last day we only tried for the last hour and didn’t get a bite but we had plenty of action with sharks and snook earlier in the day. I definitely was mixing it up all those days and we had decent snook fishing in the mornings and did the tarpon for the latter part of the day. This past week I only fished Wednesday as we got rained out Tuesday and I had some cancellations, but we had the right tides much earlier in the day this week so we went out. The weather stayed nice for us and it was a little windy but we got on a good tarpon bite and landed 1 right off the bat. After that they didn’t wanna stay on the hook for us but we put another 5 in the air I think and also caught plenty of sharks including some hammers, lemons, and bulls. Capt. Stephen also reported decent fishing around the bridges landing a nice big fish and hooking another 4 or 5 as well. So tarpon fishing locally is still an option and the backcountry is looking like it’ll be decent earlier in the summer as well. Bait is fairly difficult to get right now there is still one commercial guy catching them and we’re getting them when we can. But that always gets harder this time of year. If you want to get a trip booked give us a shout we have openings! I’ll be out of town June 14 until a little after the 4th of July, but then I’ll be fishing some again the 2nd week of July. Hope to get you out there!
Capt. Rick Stanczyk
Instagram: @richardstanczyk
Facebook: Islamorada Tarpon Fishing
YouTube: Bud n’ Mary’s Marina
