Capt. Rick Stanczyk

Fun day 2 with Chris and company today. We went after the silver king again. Bait was a little easier this AM, back on an incoming tide cycle early which has been easier on bait catching early. We found tarpon in the same area, got in a good spot and we jumped a couple soon after then got one to stick for Tiffany. A few sharks after that and we moved. Got Chris one after that a nice 40lb tarpon. After that we picked up and checked an area where we found some tarpon yesterday. Got into a big school of them rolling 10 at a time! Sometimes though it isn’t always a good thing to see quite that many. Luckily we hooked up almost instantly and AJ got his tarpon! After that though the sharks are us alive and the poons seemed to settle down and quite showing, I think the bulk of them had moved on. We rain elsewhere, and found some big balls of bait and caught a bit more. Saw a few tripletail that we tried to mess with but as soon as we got set up we really didn’t see anymore and it was overcast. We tried a nearby spot and got a nice goliath grouper. Then the sun came out and we caught a few tripletails on the way home. Off for a couple days and back at it Sunday!  3 for 5

Capt. Rick Stanczyk
Instagram: @richardstanczyk
Facebook: Islamorada Tarpon Fishing

Fun day with Peyton, Brian, and Lorrie. We were able to get bait yesterday afternoon, that’d been a little tough in the mornings lately. But tides are getting better for that early so hopefully it’ll change. Still a good bit of wind. We found tarpon early on. Not a whole ton of action out of them for us, but Peyton got his first one about a 50 lber. We caught a few sharks too. After that, we got a nice big 15 lb snook and dad Brian got a 50 lb Goliath grouper. Nice! We caught a few tripletails as well. Next stop we found a bunch more tarpon. They weren’t super happy though, but we did manage a couple bites but they just didn’t stay on the hook. But we had fun with a bunch of big blacktip sharks. Action packed day for sure! Back at it tomorrow then a couple days off.  1 for 3

Capt. Rick Stanczyk
Instagram: @richardstanczyk
Facebook: Islamorada Tarpon Fishing

Some days you just get lucky, or maybe it’s years of doing this? I had Ella, Delaney, lane, and dad Chris down for the day. We’ve had to work at fishing a bit the last week, been tough with the wind and hard on the bait too. I had a little bit of leftovers from last week for bait, we tried to catch some but struck out with that. So we went with what we had. We saw a few tarpon when we got in the area and set up. A few sharks to start. We saw a bit of activity way further out and we picked up and moved. Didn’t see much for signs of the silver king but between my eyes and the electronics we sat where I thought might be good. Sure enough within a few minutes a tarpon rolled right on top of our bait and Lane had a bite that we missed. A few more went by and the girls had the rods, they both hooked up soon after with a double header! They fought the fish well, maneuvering like pros around the boat. We got both fish up for nice pictures. After that we fished the rest of our bait hard, made one more move and dad got himself a tarpon! After that we were about out of bait. We decided to mix it up and tried fishing our artificials but didnt have a whole lot of luck with that. We did catch a few trout though. We found some more bait though and were able to load up for the next few days, as this crew had me again Thursday. Tried a couple spots for reds when the tide came in, but again not much luck with that either. But I’ll take 3 tarpon any day of the week!  3 for 4

Capt. Rick Stanczyk
Instagram: @richardstanczyk
Facebook: Islamorada Tarpon Fishing