Got out with Jim, Jay, and Ruth Anne today for some tarpon fishing for a 3/4 day. They are also fishing with me tomorrow. We ran out into the backcountry to avoid the holiday weekend crowds, but also since the fishing has been pretty good back there as of late. I also didn’t have to bother catching bait as one of the other guides wasn’t fishing this weekend and gave me a cooler of leftover mullet which was plenty for today. Things have finally started to stay semi-consistent, though I am a little leary to start thinking like that especially with this year I see how quickly it likes to change! Anyways the winds laid down to almost nothing. We fished some of the channels we did the last few days, a couple sharks to start us off and then Ruth Anne hooked a nice 90 lb tarpon we landed which put on quite a show when it was first hooked. After that things settle down for a little while and the tide started to slow up. I was threatening to leave spots and then all of a sudden Jay jumped a nice tarpon, and a few minutes after that ended up hooking one that he also landed of about 50 lbs. Now it was really time to go as the tide was getting near slack. We ran further out west where we had found fish the previous day though the tide was not quite getting going yet. We had a few shark bites while the water was still, and once it started going Jim jumped a tarpon. We didn’t see whole lot though with as calm as it was I would’ve expected to see quite a few more rolling etc… That was the last of the tarpon bites unfortunately we fished for almost another hour with the tide rolling out pretty good, though we did catch a few more sharks and a small cobia anyways. All in all no complaints after this year I’m very happy to catch at least one on any day! Tomorrow we will do it again I’ll probably start off in the same general areas and maybe check out some new stuff later on as the fish may be moving around a little bit. 2 for 4
Capt. Rick Stanczyk
5/27/16 Late May Everglades Tarpon Fishing Report
I was out with Gary over from the UK this morning we had a full day for some tarpon fishing. I was able to buy a bit of bait to get started with yesterday afternoon though of course it was much more catchable in the morning too. Winds were east again still a little breezy but not crazy. Anyways we did the same loop we did the previous day but today the fish were much more cooperative. We jumped a tarpon within the first 5 minutes of fishing, then a few minutes later hooked one that we landed a nice 80 lber or so. After that we fished a bit longer as the tide quit but not much other action. We ran further out west to catch the start of the falling tide and tried another channel. Not much there but we only gave it 20 minutes or so. We ran to a different channel and set up and we had jumped another tarpon soon after that. We eventually landed another tarpon, jumped another one, and got a technical release on another as we got leader to the tip but then he jumped and spit the hook. We also caught plenty of blacktip sharks, a cobia, and a ‘mud marlin’. It was a great day on the water hopefully fishing stays like this! 3 for 6
5/26/16 May Backcountry Tarpon Fishing in Islamorada
Got out again today with Steve and Mark. Fishing was a little tougher today, the wind was blowing though had laid down a little from what it was yesterday afternoon. Though today it was hard north wind in the backcountry once we got there, not exactly what you want in May! The wind had pushed a lot of the water out of the bay and we couldn’t quite get up to where I wanted to catch bait this morning. We picked a few drifting in the channel but had a hard time of it. After a little while we checked a couple other areas though didn’t see much else for catchable bait. Luckily we had some leftovers from the previous day anyways so we got to fishing. Didn’t have much early on though once the tide got moving we saw a few tarpon roll. They didn’t wanna play though we did catch a couple big sharks. After that we ran to another channel and looked for more bait on the way though no luck with that. We fished a bit and there were tarpon here too, though again no love from them but we caught a few small sharks and big sting rays. After that we were about out of bait and tried to catch some ladyfish in some channel runoffs, though even they didn’t want to cooperate. We did see a few mullet as the tide fell out on the edge of the flats in the second area we looked for ladyfish. I threw the net a half dozen more times to scrounge up a half dozen mullet – enough to fish with for a bit longer! We found some more tarpon and Mark did get a bite out of them, unfortunately he just didn’t stay on the hook. We did land a few more sharks and Steve got a ‘mud marlin’ sawfish which was cool. Tough day overall though we worked hard at it things just didn’t pan out, I was glad the guys had such a good day previously with the tarpon. Tomorrow i’m out again I went out this afternoon looking for bait in the bay figuring with the high winds they’d be easy to catch in the muds, only there were no good looking muds! I was able to scrounge up a few mullets from the bait guys and hopefully can catch some more in the morning, hopefully they are more cooperative tomorrow! 0 for 1
