Got back on the grind recently after going out of town for 10 days or so. So last Wednesday we tarpon fished locally around town for a 3/4 day. Had fairly good conditions all around with it being semi-overcast and a slight southeast breeze. I was thinking it might be a decent day. We ended up fishing local as my angler was a little worried about not making it the whole day and also from what I’d heard there hadn’t been a whole lot of tarpon in the backcountry yet. We found plenty of fish around the bridges though at least as many as I’d seen in the last month or so. However they were just not responsive we fished hard and moved around a good bit. Just no bites aside from a few cudas, jacks, and mutton snappers. Lots of small pickers eating our baits too which can be frustrating. Anyways once the tide quit after a couple of hours we ran back and tried some of the channels near home. Again we found fish in the 3 areas we fished… not tons but definitely a handful where we would’ve expected to get a bite or two. Though again no love they just weren’t wanting to play today. We ended up calling it a day around noon and headed home. Tough pill to swallow I hadn’t had a day all season where we hadn’t had at least a hookup but oh well it happens to the best of us and wasn’t for lack of trying!
Today we fished in the backcountry and we focused on snook for the first part of the day which was decent. The other day we had pretty good fishing for them though today was a little more work. We ended up looking for tarpon the last part of the day. Again we didn’t see much the day before when we were back there for tarpon but today we started looking around and sure enough a mile or so offshore we saw a couple of busts! Sometimes you just have to put some time in looking like that and all you have to do is see one and you might find a whole big school! Sure enough there were plenty more out there. They weren’t super happy though we had to jump around a lot and fish hard, picking through several large blacktip sharks. We finally jumped one fish and then about 30 minutes later we jumped another just didn’t stay on the hook! We grinded more and hooked a big lemon shark that dragged us around. When we landed the shark we marked a few more tarpon thankfully as we weren’t seeing a whole lot jumping around any longer. We put our last couple of baits out and we ended up hooking a double header shark and 50 lb tarpon! The tarpon stayed on for us this time thankfully and we got it up for a nice picture… great way to end the day.
I’m leaving for the Bahamas tomorrow and will be gone a week or so but will be back the following week and likely available for a few trips if anyone wants go starting around the 22nd. Can’t promise what it will be like but as mentioned it was good to see a larger group of fish back there. Hopefully they’ll stick around and I don’t think too many anglers are messing with them as they were in a not-as-much fished area, plus it’s not too busy with fisherman now. Capt. Steve and Capt. Trent are both available as well and I know they’ve still been having some luck with some local tarpon on half day trips. We’re keeping stocked up on mullet as best we can so if you want to set up a trip short notice give me a shout and we’ll get you out there.
Capt. Rick Stanczyk
Instagram: @richardstanczyk
Facebook: Islamorada Tarpon Fishing
YouTube: Bud n’ Mary’s Marina
