Alright another week down this one it got pretty windy again after we had a little over 2 weeks of almost all flat calm weather! Monday it was ripping pretty good a steady 18 knots or so. I had return customer Jon with me. We fished the bridges and today it was a little slower. Had slack tide first thing early in the AM though it was already starting to trickle in. I did not mark many fish and that may of been because of the slack tide, sometimes they don’t really line up and are just kind of floating around when there’s no current. Though we did start to find a few more in the middle of the bridge. We set up and put in work. Had to jump around a good bit for a couple of hours but eventually we got a bite. It ran for for a good bit and we gave chase. Fought it for 5 minutes or so but then we ended up pulling the hook unfortunately. About an hour later we hooked another one and it made a few leaping jumps but it ran all the way around the bridge pilling and made one last huge jump and then went through our leader. So tough break. Those were the only for sure tarpon bites we had. Day 2 I had Job and his buddy Cam. We decided to make a far run into the backcountry which I hadn’t tried yet this year though last year I fished that area for a few weeks when things got tough around town. Though we did not see a huge group of fish up there though thankfully we did find one group when we first got there. Cam caught one straight away though after that they kind of broke up. We checked a few other areas in that zone but did not see much. We ended up coming back to where we started and just put some baits out without even seeing much and we did end up getting one more tarpon so that was nice. We decided to run back towards home and tried a few other areas. We did run into a huge school of snook which was pretty cool and we found those same snook in that same area last year so really interesting. Job caught a huge one close to 20 lbs! We did find a small school of tarpon in one other area but no bites out of them and we caught a few sharks. Then Wednesday the winds laid down slightly though it was still blowing a good 15. We found some tarpon around another bridge that I hadn’t been fishing as much lately and we hooked a couple right away and landed one. Great way to start the day at least. Once the tide quit we ran down to the big bridge and again put in a little work. We ended up with a couple more bites down there and hooked a monster that Jack fought for an hour and we got near boatside but eventually went through the leader. But a little more active day at least with 4 tarpon bites and we did get a goliath grouper and a couple of mutton snappers too. Thursday I had Lee, Allen and Allens son Nate out. We opted to go in the backcountry and had a decent day back there with reds, snook, drum, and jumped a small tarpon. Friday they wanted to give the big tarpon a try and it was phenomenal fishing again! We had falling tide most of the morning and the fish were biting. We ended up getting 9 or 10 bites I think and we got a couple fish boatside but weren’t able to get any pictures unfortuantely. And had several more we fought to the leader that jumped off or popped off. But about as good as it gets which was nice to see as it was a little tougher earlier in the week. Still plenty of fish around and I’m thinking it will stay strong into June here. Capt. Luke fished a bit this week too and happy to report he’s landed tarpon on every trip he’s had so far, so what an awesome start for him! He’s got days available and is offering evening trips too. So if you want to get out last minute that’s a good option for you.
Capt. Rick Stanczyk
Instagram: @richardstanczyk
Facebook: Islamorada Tarpon Fishing
YouTube: Bud n’ Mary’s Marina
