Well we had a gorgeous flat calm warm day today. We have yet to have much cold weather at all. I haven’t been fishing tarpon much just because we are usually doing other things. Today we went in the backcountry for snook and redfish and fishing was pretty good. We did happen upon some small tarpon rolling in one of the creek mouths. As soon as the tide started in (it was slack) we eased in on them and free floated some shrimp and they went bonkers! We put one fish in the air followed by a big snook that we pulled the hook on. Then a tarpon grabbed our shrimp and screamed off down the creek though he came off as well. Then finally I floated one back there and caught a nice 20 lb tarpon. No pictures as he jumped out of my hand as we were getting the camera and I didn’t want to slam him into the boat and hurt/kill him just for a picture. Anyways sometimes you stumble into them at the right time! 1 for 3
Capt. Rick Stanczyk
11/24/15 November Tarpon Fishing in Islamorada
Well been out of town several times as of late so I haven’t been fishing a whole lot. Though I have been here and there. Fishing had been tough overall things were still incredibly warm with fits of high southeasterly winds. Not much had been very happy. We had our first taste of cool weather sunday night. When I say cool I don’t mean cold as it only got down to 70! Anyways fishing since has gotten a little better. Today we had good action with mackerels, snappers, jacks, sharks, and you guessed it even some tarpon at the end of the day. We hadn’t planned on it though I had plenty of pilchards left over at the end of the day. It was too rough to go where I wanted so we fished around a channel mouth where we often catch bait in the mornings. I had seen some snook there recently and had hoped we could catch a few. Anyways no snook but we did get some good tarpon action, jumping 5 fish and landing 1! Not a big guy they were all in the 5 to 20 lb range, but lots of fun and great way to end our day. No pictures unfortunately! Anyways I’m going out of town again for thanksgiving. As stated winter fishing is lots of action for the most part and not very good tarpon fishing so don’t expect to see too many updates. Though there is good fishing for other things and you can drop me a line to see whats up! 1 for 6.
10/27/15 Deep Everglades Tarpon Fishing in October
Well had a tarpon request the other day. I had heard it was starting to get pretty good deep in the everglades for the last ‘fall mullet run.’ We ran back there and there was TONS of bait getting popped by tarpon on the last of the falling tide. Unfortunately they were not biting really good but when the tide started to go in the bait left. We continued making drifts with our live mullet and eventually had a ‘cheap shot’ where a tarpon busted our bait but did not eat it. Then next drift we hooked and caught a 100 lb fish. Unfortunately he got us in the tree limbs and broke us off though we did get him up next to the boat briefly and leader in the rod tip for a technical release. I am going out of town now and this is likely the last ‘tarpon trip’ I will fish this year as we are now getting into the winter time mode here in the Florida Keys. Tarpon fishing is just not very good though the winter, though if we get a warm weather streak where it is 80 degrees for several days and the water temperatures get up in the high 70s it can be possible. Though I am focusing more on things like redfish, drum, and snook in the everglades, mackerel in the gulf, and patch reef fishing for porgy, hogfish, snapper, and grouper. 1 for 1
