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Got out with my dad and our friends Maria and Andy Newman.  We were fishing for snook and redfish, though happened into a school of happy tarpon!  After the snook and reds slowed down, we started getting some tarpon bites on our shrimp and jigs!  We jumped off the first two, the first one I thought was a snook and dragged me all around the boat then jumped and spit the hook!  But we landed the last 3, including a double header!  Hopefully this is a sign of a strong year to come.  I’ll start regularly fishing for tarpon in February usually.  Though we have a couple of strong cold fronts on the way here soon, so until it gets warmer it’ll be more of a lucky thing such as this day.  We also did catch some monster snook and redfish this day, including a 35 lb bull red!  Check out my other website fishingislamorada.com for the full report. 3 for 5

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

**These tarpon are under 40 inches so legally allowed to be lifted for quick picture**

Well today we had a cold front, didn’t get super cold but temperature is dropping more tonight.  We got lucky and found some tarpon in some of the canals while we were fishing for snook, redfish, black drum, and the like.  First fish of the day was a juvenile 10 lber on light tackle!  Lots of fun and managed to get him to the boat.  Keeping the little guys on there is always much harder than the big boys.  They just have less real estate in the mouth to hook ’em, and are very acrobatic and usually on our spinning rods we have a much tighter drag and such as we are fishing for other species sometimes like today.  But my dad was on the rod and knew right what to do, loosen the drag and go very easy on him and of course bow when he jumped!  Anyways first official caught tarpon of the season.  January is usually not very good fishing for them in our areas.  But usually by February sometime I do start catching them regularly and often some big fish too that are early arrivals.  It’s all condition related – if it’s calm and warm it can get good quick, but if its cold then I wouldn’t plan on it.  We have more cold weather coming this weekend, so if they are caught it’s going to be more of a lucky thing like today.  1 for 1

On a side note we did catch the largest snook I’ve ever had landed on my boat today, and quite possibly the largest for my dad ever too!  Read more about it on my fishing islamorada blog.

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

Well I got out the last two days and we had pretty slick nice calm conditions.  While December is usually not a great month for tarpon, when it slicks out and warms up a lot they can show up in a hurry!  We saw a decent amount yesterday on the 3rd, and today a bunch more!  Yesterday they did not bite for us really… we only gave it about 30 minutes in the morning and we saw a handful, then we did see a few more later in the day but again no love.  We did jump a small tarpon while catching some redfish and snook on our jerkbait however!  Though we had good action with multiple other species including redfish, snook, tripletail, sharks, and goliath grouper!  Today though we got into a big pack of tarpon first thing in the morning…  Just rolling and blooping everywhere, the type of thing that really gets your adrenaline going if you are a fishermen!  Unfortunately we had no tide so we had to wait a little bit for the tide to change.  Once it started moving, the fish kind of spread out a bit though.  With the water temperature chilly, they were not really as responsive as I’d like.  We moved several times, and caught some sharks.  After close to two hours, we were about to call it quits when suddenly my angler Rickys rod went off screaming!   A huge 150 lb tarpon came airborne and we were hooked up!  A few good jumps and some hard runs, and we got the fish boatside within 15 minutes or so.  However it was a battler and would not give up for us to get a good picture.  We spent about 20 minutes or so trying to get her to lay sideways… every time though she’d kick off and I thought we were going to lose her.  Finally though she laid up and we got a few decent pictures.  Unfortunately though one good kick of her tail and she busted off as Ricky had the leader wrapped around his hands for the picture taking.  It’s always hard to get good photos of big fish because of this, you leave yourself vulnerable while setting up for the shot and it only takes a kick of the tail for them to free themselves.  Anyways we got a decent shot or two.  That was all she wrote, we caught some redfish, trout, and a goliath grouper to end the day!  0 for 1 1 for 1

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