Ran into the backcountry again this morning. Caught a few mullets early in the dark to have some fresh livies for the day. We caught a tarpon early on the last of the falling tide and had some shark activity too. Though once the tide quit and turned we didn’t see anything or have any other bites. Looked around for some smaller stuff to bend the light rods and that was tough too.. weird day back there! But our luck got better in the afternoon we ran into a big ball of mullet which we filled the boat with. We stopped in the marina for 15 minutes to take a bathroom break and clean up the boat. Then we went out and found some fish locally in the islamorada tarpon fishing channels. We set up and hooked a nice 50 lb fish within 5 minutes. Caught him and then set back up and after another 20 minutes had a nice 100 lber on! Finished the day with that and we were very happy! Great day!
Capt. Rick Stanczyk
4/12/14 April Florida Keys Tarpon Fishing Report
Had a full day today and went backcountry tarpon fishing in the everglades. We had some baits from the night before and a few other older ones on good ice. We saw a few fish rolling as soon as we got back in the channels. Hooked up one fairly quick a nice 90 lb fish. The tide changed whilst fighting him and we came back to the area. We hooked another one after a little while, catching a couple sharks in between. A smaller fish that was very acrobatic! After that no more tarpon action and from what I heard it was fairly slow for most everyone else today, both in the backcountry and around islamorada. So we were very happy to catch two! Another full day tomorrow and probably more of the same!
4/11/14 Islamorada morning and evening tarpon report
Well fished a full day and night trip tonight. Long day! We tarpon fished this morning for a few hours. Had some action at the bridges. Several ‘cheap shots’ and fish flashing on the baits. They weren’t really happy and didn’t seem to want to bite. Though after moving around a bit we finally got a couple really interested. Both at the same time – double header! We had one go immediately under the boat and to the side which we jumped off. The other one hit right about then and we chased him through the bridge about 15 times. We finally got the leader on him for a technical release, though he wasn’t ready to give up totally. We chased him some more and unfortunately he got us under part of the bridge where the boat cant go. Oh well nice fight and a catch! The bite slowed after that as did the tide, and we did some other stuff. This evening we had the last of the falling tide early and had a bite right away that we missed unfortunately. Caught a few sharks, and saw a few fish on the bottom but not many rolling. I looked around several areas and it was pretty slow most people had not much to report, just a few bites and nobody fighting fish. So we ran back up near home and tried and finally got a nice fish to stick around 7:30. A big 90 lber we fought until dark and released on a live mullet. We had to put our time in but it paid off!
