Had Lyle and his son Hunter today down from the cold north. I got ‘no showed’ yesterday which was a bummer and I heard the fishing was good especially for tarpon. But anyways it allowed me time to go load up on bait for my next couple trips. Today we left out a little early at 6:30 with some fresh mullet. We set up in the nearby channels and soon had action. Caught a couple nice tarpon 60 and 85 lbs off the bottom baits. Also had one other fish we missed that was most likely a tarpon but didn’t get a very good look at him, he made a hard boil/bust on a live mullet but missed him. Anyways great start to the day, finished up with smaller stuff for action, and several sharks in the backcountry including a nice hammerhead!
Capt. Rick Stanczyk
2/20/14 Tarpon Fishing Report Florida Keys February
We had lots of action with big stuff – sharks and ‘mud marlin’ in the backcountry this morning. No tarpon back there. But this afternoon we hooked a nice 120+ lb fish near home again. Had him on for 10 minutes or so but we jumped him off. Had a pack of big jacks bite at the same time and caused a bit of chaos. Anyways tarpon action, you don’t catch ’em all!
2/19/14 Afternoon Islamorada Tarpon in February
Gave it a shot for the silver kings today again. Caught mullet early this morning, a nice big mud in the bay. We had to take our time and drift patiently but eventually got a good throw and lots of baits. We tried a couple backcountry channels, did not see any tarpon rolling we did catch several sharks though. Yesterday we had fished back there as well and same thing mostly sharks and a few other large creatures. The water temperatures are a few degrees cooler there though so I think many of the fish are either shut down or have been a little flushed out of that area. Anyways we hit some of the local islamorada channels in the afternoon. Put a few dead baits out and within 30 minutes we hooked into a big 120 lb tarpon. Fought it for about 45 minutes and finally landed it. Angler Bill Levor, long time Bud n Marys customer, landed his largest fish ever a 120 lb tarpon! Unfortunately I didn’t get any boat side pics though he did. If we continue having this warm weather the tarpon should get back into swing into the backcountry and are already around town here locally, plus there are other big things to pull on back there too.
