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Got out with Scott and Sherry down from Atlanta.  It was their 20th wedding anniversary and they wanted to try catching some tarpon – sounded like a great idea to me!  We headed out early and caught some bait on the way.  Bait was a little tougher we had the falling tide early on which has been a bit harder for our bait catching.  Just had to work at it and got extra messy with grass and weeds, but we got plenty of bait.  We caught the tide starting in when we got to our fishing area.  I didn’t see a whole lot of tarpon activity where we had been the last few days, so I slid further down just to fish some numbers where I’d figured they’d of been too.  We eventually saw a few roll and caught some sharks.  Then we pitched a bait out and Sherry hooked up a nice 75 lb tarpon almost instantly!  She fought him well and we got the leader to our rod tip, but he just wouldn’t roll over and unfortunately ended up throwing the hook before we could get some good boat side pictures.  But a legal catch none the less.  After that we caught a few more sharks, and then moved the boat over where we had seen more fish roll.  Soon after that it was Scotts turn and he hooked a fish of similar size.  This one fought very hard too we got him to the leader as well for an official catch, but this one we ended up just pulling the hook without a jump even.  Just bad luck for our boat side pictures today, but the fish don’t always cooperate for those!  But they got some good video of him and I got one decent jumping picture at least.  After that things slowed down for us we saw a couple triple tails but didn’t get a good shot at them, had a couple more shark and sting ray bites, and then some storms blew in and it started blowing like crazy right before it was time to head home.  Fishing seemed to slow down a little from what it was the last couple of days, but those days can spoil you as two tarpon in a day is always good with me.  Scott and Sherry said they’d be back with their son Zack next time to catch some more silver kings, I’m looking forward to it!  2 for 2

Capt. Rick Stanczyk
@richardstanczyk

Got out with Steve and Tim down from NY today for some tarpon fishing.  We headed out early and caught bait on the way.  Tarpon were right where we left them yesterday and we had a little northeasterly breeze this morning so I figured they might like that a little better then flat calm.  We had just an absolutely epic day!  They bit very well we never moved all day and had very good fishing with mostly big tarpon and some sharks.  We got one that was close to 130 or so very nice fish!  We also landed double header 100 lb tarpon which was exciting we had to chase them, unfortunately one broke off at the boat before we could get the double header picture but oh well that’s tough to do especially with 2 fish that big!  Had nice incoming tide all morning and the fishing just doesn’t get any better than that.  Hopefully those tarpon will stick around a few more days, then I’m out of town Saturday to Tuesday to watch the eclipse and visit some relatives.  The fishing may stay good all through August who knows, like I always say summer time and early fall are some of my favorite times of years to tarpon fish just because you usually have the good conditions and not near as much pressure on the fish.  6 for 8

Capt. Rick Stanczyk
@richardstanczyk

Got out with Dan Styf today he fished with me a few years ago and we had caught some nice tarpon in the summer.  Today it was pretty slick calm early and then a nice light easterly breeze later on.  We caught bait and saw tarpon rolling out in the open water as soon as we got in the area I wanted to fish, we had to jump around a few times, but eventually got in front of some hungry fish.  We had good incoming tide for a while and we ended up getting four nice tarpon, all big ones in the 65-100 lb range!  One never jumped which was cool I thought for sure it was a big blacktip shark, and another one we had to fight for a good 30 minutes he dragged us for quite a ways.  Also one fish we didn’t get to the hand, but got him on the windon leader next to the boat and he took off and spit the hook on another jump but got our technical catch anyways!  Just an epic morning you can’t ask for much more than that…  We also caught some blacktips and a big lemon shark.  After that we tried off the mainland and caught the start of the falling tide.  Didn’t see much for tarpon our there though we caught some little sharks.  We got a nice triple tail that floated by, and then spent the rest of our time looking for them.  We had several shots and hooked one more but he got off near the boat.  Wow what a day just everything Dan had asked for.  I’m fishing the next few days then out of town Saturday, I’ll be back on the 23rd and have some availability from then on to the end of the month.  The tarpon bite has been strong and can remain that way through October sometimes.  4 for 4

Capt. Rick Stanczyk
@richardstanczyk