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6/9/19 – Got out with Erik, Dan, and Marc today.  Weather was very iffy, lots of rain and thunderstorms around.  But we ventured out back.  Bait had been tough to come by, even shrimp for our other styles of fishing.  Luckily I had some shrimp and pinfish put away.  We looked for mullet early but no luck.  So we decided to focus mostly on snook and redfish for the day.  We got rained on a good bit, and had to dodge some lightning storms, but eventually it got nice and we had a really good day catching a ton of redfish and good handful of snook.  We didn’t really try much for tarpon but did give it a shot for the last 45 minutes or so with the 6 baits we had just close to home as weather wasn’t letting us get to where I wanted to go further.  Caught several jacks but never had a tarpon bite.  But again bait was hard to it was more of a long shot but we did have good fishing otherwise.  0 for 0

6/10/19 – Well we got lucky late in the afternoon yesterday the bait showed up and I drove back to the marina and was able to catch a good bit with a throw of the cast net.  So today we did get to try a bit more for tarpon.  We started with snook and redfish which was very good we had probably 40 reds and 15 snook, including a couple big snook on our pinfish.  The rain finally cleared and we decided to run further and check an area where we did good with tarpon last week.  We found a good load of them, and middle of the day we ended up catching 5 tarpon and jumped 5 more!  Incredible fishing for just a short hour and a half window.  We caught 2 double headers, and another single and we had 3 other bites while fighting that one we missed – just awesome!  Was able to round a few more baits up this afternoon too, so we’re in better shape on that front.  May give them a try again tomorrow.  5 for 10

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

Got out early and made a long run today.  We fished areas I hadn’t really been before.  We had looked in a few other on the way but saw no tarpon.  These were areas I had done well at last year but hadn’t really found them there good yet this year.  So we decided to push a little further.  I know tarpon did get in these spots, and with it slicking out I figured we could just run through and look and if we didn’t see anything we’d just backtrack and go to Plan B.  Well we got lucky and ran into a big wad of fish, rolling 5 at a time!  We set up and within 30 seconds I think we had hooked up!  We missed him but then a few minutes later we were on again and actually had a double header hookup!  Lost one, but we landed the other.  After that the craziness slowed down but still a good amount of fish rolling in the near distance.  We ended up catching 4 altogether and missed 2 others, and all before 9:30 AM.  After that we decided to go try for snook and other stuff.  Unfortunately a lot of boats in the areas I fished yesterday for snook, so we had to jump around but we picked a few fish also some redfish and trout as well.  So we ended up getting 3 backcountry SLAMS which was cool too.  All in all awesome day and always fun to discover new stuff!  That’s what the Contender Bay Boat is for getting to new far off areas, I’m sure I’ll be back there again.  4 for 6

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

Lots of fun and lots of laughs with Jim, Scott, Gary, and Bill! We focused on tarpon most of the day. We found fish just about everywhere we went though they really were not biting on the falling tide. We got in several good scenarios with fish rolling around and going by us, and seemed like any minute it’d happen but just didn’t come to fruition. We waited for the tide change in our last area, and made one last stop on some fish and finally we hooked a nice 40 lber we landed! After that we moved again and had a big shark on and while battling that we hooked a nice 60 lber that we got! It was all smiles we really had to work for them but we made both bites count. Some times you have to live and die by the sword when you are all in for tarpon, and hopefully the persistence will pay off. Luckily we had plenty of sharks to keep us busy in between.  2 for 2

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