Capt. Rick Stanczyk

Well got back from our little Easter getaway and have an update from last week and yesterday (Monday).  Fishing overall has still been on the tough side.  Just a strange year we haven’t had many fish show up locally around the channels or bridges here where we are normally seeing big numbers by late March.  Not sure what’s going on but it’s really been a grind all day for a bite or two many trips and sometimes not even getting that.  Last week we were coming off the full moon and still had chillier than average tempartures with water temps still in the mid 70 range.  We struggled most of the week but we did not catch a fish Tuesday (we jumped 1 off and possibly had another bite at the bridge).  Wednesday we caught 1 early on at day break and we found a decent group of fish deep in the backcountry but they didn’t bite for us.  Then Thursday it slicked off and got real nice and we had a good day on those backcountry fish landing 3 and hooking a couple others.  Funny to see a good group of fish in the deep backcountry right now usually those fish are all local here around our channels and bridges and have more or less left the backcountry areas, but as I said it’s a weird year.  I left town for the weekend after that and was hopeful maybe that would be the start of things turning around.  We had heavy winds over the weekend which I was not sad about missing and then Monday when I fished it was still blowing pretty good but got a little nicer by days end and looks like it’ll be staying in the 15 mph range this week easterly so that’s good.  Anyways Monday I ran back to the backcountry hopeful those tarpon would still be there after the windy weather and nobody really had a report over the weekend because it was blowing so hard then.  Unfortunately they all but disappeared we put some time in and fished a few areas to give it a try.  I only saw one jump and never really marked much of anything.  We caught a few sharks and then tried a few other areas back there before running back to near town.  Around the bridges we had weak tide and marked a few tarpon in some areas but never had a bite out of them, and tried locally around our local channels the last hour and marked one fish but again no bites but caught a few more sharks.  So tough day.  Hopefully this week will get better and we’re getting to where the water and all should warm up and be stabile.  With the numbers of fish around I imagine it will still be a grind a lot of days but there should be windows where it’s good if you get out early and put the time in.  And who knows maybe we’ll get a good push this week or sometime in May and have some strong later season fishing this year.  But all in all I must say this is one of the slowlest Aprils I’ve seen.

Capt. Rick Stanczyk
Instagram: @richardstanczyk
Facebook: Islamorada Tarpon Fishing
YouTube: Bud n’ Mary’s Marina

Another week of fishing here in the Florida Keys for tarpon in April and I’ve got another update!  So we’ve still been kind of waiting on a bigger push of fish here in the Islamorada area.  As mentioned we had a lot of early season arrivals in the backcountry as is normal however that started drying up a little bit a few weeks ago.  Though locally we’ve not seen big schools of fish around our bridges and channels yet.  There have been some decent groups of resident fish and we’ve still been catching some, but a lot of working different spots and hunting around… not just staying in one area all day where there are tons of fish to move around on.  So this week we had southerly pre-frontal conditions Tuesday and I had one of my best days in a while.  We landed three tarpon and hooked 4 or 5 more that we jumped off.  We kind of had bites throughout the day every little area we tried produced so one of those where we just kept getting lucky.  The following day we had hard north wind and a temperature drop.  It didn’t get freezing cold but water temps did get back down to the mid 70s and with how the fishing has been I feel like any detriment to the conditions isn’t going to help.  We fished hard all day and only had one bite we missed around mid day on the slack tide of all things.  But we did catch plenty of jacks and a few sharks.  I had the same anglers both days and they at least got to see the very good day before.  Thursday we didn’t tarpon fish but I had my dad looking for big snook in the backcountry.  We did mark a few tarpon back there but we didn’t really fish for them, though I doubt it would’ve been very good again with some good north wind and chillier weather.  Friday we did go down to some of the more southerly bridges and we did finally see a good load of fish.  That was nice to see and even had a big hammerhead come up as we hooked one.  We only fished a couple hours it wasn’t great we worked hard moving 4 or 5 times and we got zipped by a couple of tarpon… short bites we call them where they just picked it up and ran hard for a few seconds before dropping it.  We did catch quite a few big nurse sharks though.  But again it was northerly breeze and water was still 76 degrees.  So things are looking promising once we get some more stable weather and the cold fronts cease.  Again I’m feeling we will have stronger fishing in later May and June hopefully since it wasn’t an early season bonanza this year.  I’m looking forward to next week as it looks like better weather/no more cold fronts, and I will have an update Thursday afternoon before we go out of town hopefully.

Capt. Rick Stanczyk
Instagram: @richardstanczyk
Facebook: Islamorada Tarpon Fishing
YouTube: Bud n’ Mary’s Marina