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Got out for some fun fishing with my dad and our friend/marina worker Vic.  We were after snook for the most part and had some epic fishing for them, landing a bunch including a couple jumbos in the 36-37 inch range.  But we had a lot of tarpon busting around us too and we managed to cast and get one on a pinfish.  Dad did the job on a nice little 25 lber.  There were definitely some larger fish in the mix too and I think if you were really targetting them a bit more you would’ve had some activity.  September and October can be very good fishing, it almost felt to me like we were getting a touch of fall today as the air was a hair cooler and seemed to be a good amount of bait around back there.  Next week looks like a lot of northeast wind and I think with the hurricane last week and this northeast breeze, that may get the fall bait run started early for a bit.  1 for 2

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

Well got out after having cancelled several trips this last week due to hurricane dorian.  We were unaffected here, though we did have a few fairly windy days that probably wouldn’t of been ideal for fishing.  But the last couple days were definitely much nicer.  I had Spencer and Becky down as well as Brandon who works at Bud n Marys who is friends with this couple.  We mixed it up and caught our bait first thing which was nice and easy.  We fished for redfish and snook most of the day, it was very good.  I was not expecting it to be so great as we had hard west wind for several days, and it was still blowing west though had let up slightly.  But the water wasn’t too dirty and we caught fish everywhere we went.  We did try for tarpon for the last hour and found a good school in a channel.  Ended up getting a couple bites, and Becky landed a nice 40 lber for a backcountry SLAM.  Looks like a calm weekend and then winds are back to east next week, should be alright for fishing!  1 for 2

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

Well I’ve had a few days off this week and spent some time up in Miami, and the few trips I did before that we didn’t really focus on tarpon as there had been some excellent snook/redfish fishing, and my anglers were all about catching fish.  Tarpon have still been just kind of hit and miss, you can definitely catch them but often have to really dedicate time to get a bite or two…  Today though we just were really doing snook/redfish stuff, but we saw some little guys in an area and got a few shots on them.  A couple of small 5-10 lbers we hooked a double header and landed both fish, but just got one up for a picture.  It worked out great as we were doing an article for Florida Sportsman, and we also caught probably 30 snook (including 3 that were jumbo 15-20 lbers!), maybe 10 redfish, and a handful of snapper, ladyfish, jacks, and trout.  Just awesome fishing especially on a day when you can use it for something like that.  2 for 3

Also as far as this hurricane dorian goes – the keys should be fine.  East coast of florida… not so much.  We are on the ‘good’ side of the storm (southwestern side).  This means we’re not going to get the heavy wind/surge, so even if this thing ends up hitting closer in Miami/homestead, it really doesn’t look like it’ll do a whole lot here.  But right now all signs point to hitting closer to somewhere between palm beach and central florida area.  Probably be a couple of wet days with some 20-25 mph winds, so maybe not the greatest fishing conditions but nothing crazy.  In the long run it’ll probably be good for our fishing as it’ll help lower salinity in the bay with all the rain, and keep things a bit cooler with the wind/clouds/rain as we get into some of the hottest months of the year.

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