Well through another week here they keep rolling by! We had an overall nice week here with the wind finally laying down late last weekend. I had regular Randy and Karen Townsend out for a couple days this week on Monday and Wednesday. We found some fish in the backcountry in an area that we used to fish often years ago though I haven’t been to much in recent years as the fish hadn’t been there as consistently. But it was good to see them there! We got out early Monday and caught the start of the falling tide. We were able to just kind of sit on numbers and got several tarpon bites as well as sharks. When I say sit on numbers I mean just sitting on known spots where you catch tarpon – usually either some kind of bottom or hold they may like to lay in, or edges of channels that they often cruise past. As opposed to how I usually fish for them these days which is using my eyes and sonar to locate them and set up on them. So a little more old school if you will. Anyways we ended up hooking 5 tarpon doing that and we landed 3 and got two up for pictures. One of them that we didn’t get pictures of was a complete moose and dragged us over 2 miles out into the gulf! Tuesday I had Michael and his son Aaron out. Fishing was a little tougher this day but the weather sure was nice it really slicked out flat calm. We tried a similar tactic and only had a few shark bites the first hour. Eventually once that wind lied down I visually saw some tarpon and we moved – they were lining up on the opposite side of the channel a little more. We got in them and even while we marked them pretty regularly next to us, it still took about an hour for us to get a bite but we did and caught a nice fish for Michael. We ended up moving and found a pack of some smaller fish elsewhere and had several more bites and caught a nice one for Aaron but unfortunately a bull shark got it before we could get it boatside. Wednesday I had Randy and Karen again and we got on those smaller fish again from the get go. Karen caught a nice one to start the day. We moved around and had to work a little but we eventually got in front of them again and jumped several more and then Randy got once for himself again. It was about 10:00 and we decided to run back towards home to try some bridge fishing. Caught some fresh bait on the way back and checked out some of the local bridges at Channel 5 and Channel 2. We did not see much for tarpon however – they were in there good a week or more ago but I really did not see much aside from a handful. Karen caught a nice big bull shark and a big nurse shark. We eventually ran back towards home to try the local channels nearby and hit three spots but did not see a thing though we caught another nurse shark. Thursday I just had return customer Chris and his son Odin. We ran into the backcountry to try that routine one more time but today wasn’t our day. The pack of smaller fish we had lots of luck with the previous few days seemed to have broken up. We saw a few but never really could get on them and did not have a bite from them though we caught a few sharks including a big bull. I decided to run and try another backcountry area where we’d been catching them a couple weeks ago but I hadn’t been too since, as the around town fishing the day before seemed pretty quiet. We got lucky and did find a big group of tarpon though we had a very weak tide setup in that area for the day. Some days you get these weak tides where it will come in hard like normal, but then only falls for an hour or two and you get very little current movement. Fish often just don’t like that and don’t feed well in that scenario, and it is more or less severe depending the area you are fishing as we didn’t have that problem in the area we were fishing previously. But you just have to play the hand you are dealt and the tarpon were there so we tried. Unfortunately we did not get a bite though we caught some more big sharks. So stinks to have stuck out but we had a good run as of late. And finally today on Friday I fished Keith and his brother Dale. Keith has fished all over and had never caught a tarpon. We had the high winds that had picked up the day before but we ran out into the backcountry early. I was tempted to run straight to where we had found all those fish the previous day, being we’d be there early and have the better incoming tide. However I decided to stick it out in the channels and ‘fish the numbers’ I was previously speaking of. Sure enough we had a bite within about 10 minutes and Dale caught a nice tarpon of 40 lbs or so that we got up for pictures. We set back up and another 10 minutes later, Keith was hooked up to a nice 60 lber! We fought her for a little while and got her to the boat several times, but unfortunately a bull shark came up and attacked so we popped the fish off before it got eaten. After that we fished a little more and we tried several more backcountry channels but all we found were sharks. Tried nearby home for the last hour and we did mark a few fish close to home but didn’t have a bite, and the boys were beat and we came in a little early at 12:30. So all in all a pretty good week of fishing aside from Thursday but every now and then you stumble. Pulled the boat today for an oil change this weekend and we’ll be back at it Monday. It’ll be another windy week but we’ll see how it pans out. Give me a shout if you want to get out, Capt. Steve still has some availability here and there especially for evening trips which he’s been productive with (he caught a couple fish each of the last evenings he fished). Also summer will be here before you know it so get your summer plans booked!
Capt. Rick Stanczyk
Instagram: @richardstanczyk
Facebook: Islamorada Tarpon Fishing
YouTube: Bud n’ Mary’s Marina
