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Well we had a minor front come in this morning.  Winds were a breeze out of the west this morning then this afternoon it was honking pretty good northwest.  We caught a couple tarpon in the first 2 hours on our morning trip.  After that it seemed to slow down and we moved down to try some live bait spots.  The live mullet were tough this morning, the commercial guys brought some down from key largo so we got a few from them.  We saw plenty of fish at the bridges but they were not interested in the mullets.  This evening we went back to the bridges, the tide was falling and it was ripping!  Unfortunately the mullets were small and not strong enough to keep up with the current.  We were able to fish a handful of stronger larger ones for a couple hours, but only had a couple of cheap shots on them.  Saw a few boats hook fish, but only maybe 3 out of about a dozen boats in 2 hours.  So we ran back up the road and tried my morning spot.  Several boats in there… I hate seeing so many boats in some of our holes where we try to only go when we need to catch one… especially the weekend warriors!  Anyways we fished it hard and had a few pickup and drops, then finally got tight on a nice 80 lb fish.  We chased him through the crab trap buoys and got leader on him, but unfortunately he came unbuttoned before we could get a good picture.  But a release!  So 3 for the day not bad for the conditions!  Looks to be northwest tomorrow and north monday though the wind speed is coming down a bit.  I really hope this is the last of the cold fronts!!!

Capt. Rick Stanczyk

Well I had the day off from tarpon fishing yesterday.  My anglers wanted to go in the back and pull on big stuff, mud marlin and sharks.  We did just that and were tight on a half dozen mudsters and another half dozen big lemons all day long.  I was itching to be tarpon fishing though I heard it was going off around town that day and this morning too, but I had this morning off to take care of an oil change and routine maintenance.  You also need to take a morning off here and there it’s nice not to be up at 5 AM!  But we got back on it tonight and fishing was good.  I had Bill from NJ out who had fished here before and was looking to land a nice tarpon.  We had to look around a bit at first I tried some areas that were reportedly good this afternoon with the last of the incoming tide but the fish moved out when the tide changed I guess.  We found them eventually though and the action was hot when we got there!  We caught 3 out of probably 8 solid bites and several other cheap shots which was very exciting, I don’t think we went more than 5 minutes without a fish behind the boat going crazy.  All on live mullet.  One nice 100+ lber that we leadered but he got away before we could get him up for a boatside pic, but the others were a bit easier to handle.  Fun night, looks like a front coming in tomorrow but not going to get real cold but may slow the bite down a little.  Maybe it will put off all the weekend warriors!

Capt. Rick Stanczyk

The tarpon bite was good today despite the weather.  The front that came in last night did not cool things down any.  The wind started out north though came northeast relatively quick.  We had good action at the channel 2 bridge tarpon fishing.  A few bites on the live baits that we missed, then caught one finally – a nice 35 lb fish that was great for pictures.  We ran back and set back up and within 5 minutes had another nice fish up of 85 lbs chasing live mullet.  This time my angler got it right and we hooked him and chased him through the bridge.  Landed him and after that we went out to bend the small rods for a bit.  The afternoon falling tide was good locally we fished the islamorada tarpon channels and we had 2 bites in the last hour, catching our last fish of close to 100 lbs.  Making us 3 for 6 for the day, we also caught a big ‘mud marlin’ that was almost 300 lbs.  Great day tarpon fishing islamorada in april!

Capt. Rick Stanczyk