September Fishing

Well got back out after it today.  I know many of you had heard but I was involved with a getting struck by lightning back in late August!  Luckily I survived and had customers on the boat that knew CPR and was close to home to be brought to safety.  But a scary situation in deed.  I’ve had no lingering side effects and have gotten back to normal life now.  Anyways today I had Jon and Tanya out who fished with me last year.  We had caught a few mullet the day before though they were a little hard to come by.  Did not see a whole lot of tarpon but we did find a small handful in one of the nearby channel mouths.  Set up and sure enough we got bit!  We definitely hooked two and caught one, and I think had another possible zip on a bait that dropped it quickly.  So good to see and we only had about 6 baits so nice when the bites come quick and easy like that.  After that we went snook fishing which was really good and caught some nice little goliath groupers too.  There were plenty of small finger mullets on the incoming tide when we did that which provided us good bait for snook.  Usually as we get into october we get some more tarpon coming down south as the big mullet run makes its way down here.  We’ve also been very quiet with hurricanes not to jinx us but I dont think they’ve had a named storm in the Atlantic yet this season which is a record.  So no reason not to try and come down if you want to enjoy some good off season fishing where you get the place to yourself!  I’ve opened up my calendar and have some trips already booked next week and in late September and October.  But i’ll be open to taking some more and Capt. Luke is also available.  I’m running Capt. Steve’s boat as mine is getting repaired after the lightning strike but hoping to have it back possibly next week and will be putting a new motor on regardless.  Hope to have you out there soon give me a shout if you want to talk about fishing!

Capt. Rick Stanczyk
Instagram: @richardstanczyk
Facebook: Islamorada Tarpon Fishing
YouTube: Bud n’ Mary’s Marina

Got out last week with Mike and Barbara for some tarpon action. We actually decided to try and focus more on snook which I’ve been having some luck lately with some of the big ones. So we did that early on and weren’t really hitting the snook so great – we missed one bite and then hooked one that we got to the boat but pulled the hook before we could net it! I just decided to put the tarpon rods out while we were sitting there as I’ve caught tarpon just sitting on that spot before while snook fishing. Sure enough we ended up going 3 for 3 on little tarpon so it made our day for sure! I wasn’t seeing too many otherwise though we had marked a handful while we were driving around there so it was a welcome surprise. Barbara ended up catching another juvenile tarpon while we were throwing pinfish in the creeks for snook so it was just a tarpon kind of day for us while we were really going for snook! Other than that I have not done a whole lot of tarpon fishing as mentioned we’ve been getting good shots on those big snook though when conditions are right. However if you are looking to go tarpon fishing it is definitely still a good possibility. Baits been fairly consistent to get and while I haven’t seen big hordes of fish like we were seeing a month ago and in July, the ones that are around are happy and as we get into October we’ll likely see another good push of them as it starts to cool off up north and we get the fall bait run going on. Otherwise we’ve had nice weather overall a few showers and rain storms that have been finding us off & on, but we’ve been able to fish around them every time and only gotten wet a couple times. So far storms have held off hopefully that continues we have another couple months to go though.

Capt. Rick Stanczyk
Instagram: @richardstanczyk
Facebook: Islamorada Tarpon Fishing
YouTube: Bud n’ Mary’s Marina