Well the tarpon fishing had gotten a little tougher as of late. My last night trip a couple nights ago we only had 1 for sure bite at the end of the night right after 8 PM and unfortunately jumped him off. That was on a live crab near sunset. We did have some sharks and stuff earlier on the bottom and another bite that may possibly have been a tarpon but not sure. Yesterday we caught a ton of mullet they were thick and even found some big balls of them and prepared for a banner day… however the tarpon were tough to find in the back I tried off the mainland where it had been really good, however no tarpon but we did catch plenty of big sharks – bulls and blacktips, and a small goliath grouper plus another big one that rocked us up. We ended up running back near islamorada and did hook into a nice 40 lb fish on live mullet that we got near the boat and then pulled the hooks on, but at least fought him for a while and got some good jumps. Today the winds kicked up hard out of the south. We drifted a little early in the AM with no luck on crabs, then dead baited and caught about an 80 lb tarpon in Islamorada near lignumvitae key. We then ran into the backcountry but the mullet that were thick the day before were not there, we did catch about 8 or so. We played with some smaller fish for a while and had fun, then tried another channel back there for tarpon on the falling tide. As soon as our first bait was out we hooked into one! We ended up catching 3 out of 5 back there plus several blacktip sharks – going 4 for 6 for the day! Most the fish in the backcountry were in the 40 – 50 lb range, not big guys but still lots of fun and very acrobatic! I had the same 3 guys the last two days so they were happy to get into a bit of a tarpon frenzy and see what it’s all about – and everyone got to catch one!
Capt. Rick Stanczyk
305-747-6903
rick@islamoradatarpon.com
