Capt. Rick Stanczyk, Author at Capt. Rick Stanczyk's Islamorada Tarpon Fishing

8/5/2025 Evening Tarpon fishing in the Florida Keys in August

Capt. Trent has been on a tear lately with the tarpon on the evening trips! Summer time yields some great opportunities for resident fish and right now they are literally just minutes away from the dock. Very little pressure in July and August especially in that evening fishing window you’re often the only boat out there. Spawning is over and the fish are packing in calories and much less finicky as they sometimes can be months earlier. Not that that is always a guarantee but seems to be the case as of late! Also another plus is often taking the pressure of finding bait out of the equation as we are able to source bait at the dock that is available almost every day from the other boats coming in. So we had a last minute trip last night that was booked the day before. Capt. Trent got them out at 4:00 pm and they did the tarpon thing and it was game on from the get-go. All throughout the year but especially in July and August we use a ‘dead bait’ approach to catching tarpon. Usually a chunk of some kind of meat on the hook and we either drift those baits to them or set them out with a sliding sinker. We fish known areas where tarpon congregate but with the warm, calm summer waters we often are looking for them rolling on the surface or with our fish finders. So on the trip they ended up catching six tarpon and jumped off a couple more! Medium to larger size fish too in the 50 to 100 lb range. Now this fishery can be good all the way through October. If you’re thinking about it drop me an email and we can discuss.

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

August 6, 2025 by Capt. Rick Stanczyk August Fishing Trentin Leary

8/2/25 Red hot evening tarpon bite in Islamorada in August!

Capt. Trent as well as Capt. Steve have been getting out lately on some evening tarpon trips here in Islamorada. The fishing has been nothing short of phenomenal lately… Trent had 5 a few nights ago and 6 last night! Packs of resident fish are hungry and there has been very little pressure on them in the evenings so it’s been good! Even with lobster mini season going on which is normally a time you don’t want to be fishing locally they’ve been chewing. Great to see especially after we had such a tougher early tarpon season this year in March/April. Everything just getting much better later this season but we’ll take it. I myself was in the backcountry again tarpon fishing today and it was good too we ended up catching 4 and jumping off several others along with some big sharks. So if you want to do a half day trip those evening 4pm to 8pm slots are a good bet. The boys have access to bait which they can get earlier in the day, and that is often the tough thing to get for trips this time of year. Shoot me an email if you are interested in going or I have full day slots available for the backcountry option too! Or you can book now on the website.

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

7/30/25 End of July Tarpon Report

Got out the last couple of days with Ross and Harper visiting from Dallas. Today was the first day of mini season too but thankfully we don’t have to deal with all of that in the Everglades where I like to fish! We had phenomenal fishing both days! Yesterday we started with tarpon which have been swarming in the backcountry the last several weeks. It was slick calm which is often ideal for that early morning window especially, and the tide was just starting out. The fish were balled up tight… we were marking groups or 15, 20, 30 or more sometimes! We got bit up and landed 1 and jumped several more. Sharks started to get us so we moved around. Eventually that early morning ‘golden hour’ came to an end but we had lots of bites though they weren’t staying buttoned very well. We moved offshore and found some more and jumped another tarpon out there but the little blacktips started to show up and drive us nuts. So we moved more and stumbled into another group of tarpon. Not big numbers and I didn’t think it was going to produce more than a bite for us, but these fish were happy! We ended up catching a couple more and jumped another 3 or 4. So all in all over 10 bites on the day which was spectacular! After that we jumped in the creeks and caught some finger mullets and went snookin’ which wasn’t red hot but was productive we caught 8 or so plus a few other things.

Day 2 we did a similar game plan and found the tarpon early on again. Not as ‘schooled up’ and there was a tiny bit of a breeze (which felt good at least). We had the last trickle of incoming tide. Sure enough we set up and hooked one in the first couple minutes that we landed so a good start! Ended up jumping a couple more and hooked into some massive sharks… hooked a triple header of sharks at one point! After that we moved and hooked into a nicer size tarpon that Ross caught about a 50 lber. After that things settled down and the sharks got active again. We looked in some other areas but didn’t see much more for tarpon and decided to go snookin’ again. That again was productive we had to work at it but caught some finger mullets again, and jumped around some different spots picking snook and small goliath groupers again. Did get one more small tarpon on a finger mullet too so that was cool.

So all in all some great fishing all around! July’s been hot and I have availability in August too which can still be good as can September. I think those resident tarpon will be here all summer with some days being better than others but that’s fishing. All I can say is it’s been a heck of a lot better than our early season fishing this year in March/April where we had just a tough start to tarpon season. But if you want to come any time the next few months we can often set something up short notice and somewhat cherry pick the conditions if you have a decent window to fish. Drop me a line or book now on Vally!