Capt. Rick Stanczyk

Got out yesterday with a couple good friends Bobby & Gina.  Bobby I went to coral shores high school with down here and we’re still good friends.  I caught some mullet locally early in the morning and we headed out.  The time change it was still near day break which was nice.  Was sort of pre-frontal condition we had a decent west wind, not blowing too hard but once we got offshore in the near gulf, you definitely get some larger swells there in the open water.  Luckily my contender bay boat can handle it no problem, though I will say we didn’t see another boat out there all day!  Tarpon were flopping around just about everywhere.  We hooked one with the first bait out after about 15 minutes.  Stud fish of 100 lbs or so, she screamed drag for a good 10 second freight train run before jumping!  Could’ve nearly spooled us honestly!  We fought her for a good 15 minutes and got her boat side though she popped off on the leader.  It’s especially hard to leader big fish for a trophy shot picture when you are getting tossed around in big swells, and aside with the shark problem as bad as it is I honestly rather the fish break off with good energy left to be able to evade them.  After that we started getting some shark bites so we jumped around.  We ended up catching two more tarpon that we got leader releases on and quite a few more sharks including a couple large bulls.  I was able to get a couple cool jumping videos you can check out down below.  I have a couple days open near the end of the month and still a few days in April and May.  Again I’m doing a season rate that’s slightly higher but I’m only fishing 3x a week, so I can often move your day around if the weather is bad or I think fishing is not gonna be worthwhile.  And I also film a lot of the trip and can send you cool professionally edited clips such as this.  Give me a shout and if I’m not available my other captains are doing a great job these days too and are available to be booked for any trip length or date as long as they’re open!

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

Got out with repeat customer Irv and his buddy Billy.  Irv lives down here in the winter and has fished with me for quite a few years now, as does Billy.  We were able to make a last minute skip trip happen this coming week (leaving tomorrow) but luckily Irv was able to go today as we were suppose to go tomorrow.  Conditions looked great we had fairly calm winds and it’s gotten nice & warm lately – spring has sprung!  I was able to catch some bait Friday since I was showing one of my new captains a little about fishing and saved that for the day.  We got out early at 6:30 AM and made it back to the tarpon grounds quickly.  At first glance we didn’t see a whole lot… I spent some time rigging and scanning the horizon but alas, not much as far as visible fish jumping and splashing as they like to do.  Then we ran another couple miles north down the beachlines and bingo – huge tarpon airing out free jumping, sometimes 3, 4, even 5 at a time!  A few fly fisherman were in on them too but for the most part it was a lot of wide open water calling us!  We set up and had the last trickle of falling tide for an hour or so.  It was dead low tide but the current often runs about an hour or so after the level hits low.  Sure enough we got into some good groups of fish we could see them splashing and marked them on our fish finders.  We had to put a little time in and there was no by-catch, just sitting and waiting for a bite!  But we hooked into 4 good tarpon and landed all 4 of them.  Not monsters they were all 40 to 60 lbs… fun size as I like to say as you get a good fight and nice acrobatics but you aren’t pulling on some monster for an hour +, and you can often get good pictures by the boat as they’re more cooperative with that.  I think Irv landed 3 and Billy got 1.  We had a couple others grab the baits and just spit ’em out before we even knew what happened.  Once the tide turned the tarpon seemed to spread out a lot and then the sharks and other junk moved in.  We decided to give the tarpon a break and tried some large snook spots which was productive… we landed 4 big snook in the 15 to 20 lb range.  What an unbelievable finish to just an awesome day!  I don’t have too much left in March but I do have a few days open, and I still have a few dates left in ‘prime time’ April & May.  I have a feeling we’re on the verge of some epic fishing this  year as the water quality seems much improved in the backcountry and I guess call it just gut feeling but I think we’re due for a really good season.  One thing also I know the red tide up the coast is very bad right now and while it’s a terrible thing there, it sometimes leads to good fishing where we are as the fish don’t want to go north into that stuff.  Time will tell I suppose!

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

Got out just showing one of my young captains (Trent) a little more about tarpon fishing in Islamorada.  We did a bit of recon and were going over some strategies and such.  Found a good amount of bait nearby locally so that was good to see.  Mullet will likely start becoming the bait of choice as we get into March, April, and May.  We found a few rolling tarpon in a nearby channel and sure enough set up and hooked one within about 15 minutes!  Nice medium size fish around 40-50 lbs.  So that was good to see!  After that we just kind of did some looking around and didn’t end up putting the rods out again.  Didn’t see much for tarpon life around the bridges though we did find one other little channel further south that had a good load of tarpon laying on the bottom.  So there are definitely fish starting to show up and assuming we dont get too much more cold weather, you can have a good shot at catching some early season fish.  My young guys are hungry so doing an afternoon/early evening trip is a possibility and the nice thing then you really get the fishing grounds to yourself as not many guys are doing evening trips until late March/April.  So just a possibility and that is often available somewhat short notice so you can cherry pick conditions.  Anyways hopefully much more to come soon.

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