2024 Tarpon Season Outlook

Here you can read our latest fishing reports.  I try to keep this section updated regularly when we are tarpon fishing consistently.  Though remember in the off season we may not be fishing as much or we may be targeting other things.

September is here and we’ve had some good ‘late season’ resident tarpon fishing in the backcountry as of late.  If you are wanting to get out now or in October, it’s not a bad time to go at all.  You get the place to yourself and availability isn’t a problem… also moving days around is a lot easier if there are weather complications etc…  Full day or 3/4 day recommended for most tarpon trips as we’re having better fishing a bit further back where it’s an hour run or so.  Bait has been fairly easy most of the time too.  If you want to get in on the late season action give me a shout.

Capt. Rick Stanczyk
305-747-6903
Instagram: @richardstanczyk
Facebook: Islamorada Tarpon Fishing

8/29/2024 Late August Tarpon Fishing Update in Islamorada

Well got out for a couple days here before labor day weekend.  Still a good amount of tarpon in the backcountry but not quite as many as we saw last week.  More concentrated and not visually seeing them jump all around like they sometimes do.  But we found a decent body of them in one of the areas we often see them the last two days.  Yesterday we looked around a good bit before just kinda putting them out.  We ended up seeing one jump and hooked up pretty quickly and caught it.  After that the weather got bad there was a good squall line moving down the edge of the everglades that chased us out of there.  We ended up fishing some of the channels of flamingo and found a few more tarpon and managed a couple other bites but they didn’t stay hooked up for us.  But at least we got one.  Today we had similar weather pattern but we had a good calm window for the first couple of hours.  I ran right to where we caught our first fish yesterday and had to look around but we did mark some fish on the sonar.  Pretty much every time we marked one we set up and put our baits out and after 5-10 minutes we’d hook up.  We ended up catching 4 and jumped off one more so really good fishing overall.  Did see one big pack of fish that we drifted a bait into and hooked up which was really cool.  After that again the weather started getting nasty and blowing 20 mph and rain, so we ran back towards flamingo but got chased out of there too and ended up calling it a day early.  But anyways still good opportunities for tarpon this late summer.  I’ll be back to fishing next week have a few days coming up but if you want to get out after them in the next couple of months give me a shout.  Capt. Stephen will be back early September too and we’ll be working together to keep grinding on these tarpon.

Capt. Rick Stanczyk
Instagram: @richardstanczyk
Facebook: Islamorada Tarpon Fishing
YouTube: Bud n’ Mary’s Marina

End of August Tarpon Fishing Update for Islamorada

I hadn’t been fishing much lately so that’s why I haven’t posted much.  But I had gotten out some the last week a couple times so wanted to share an update.  The last week or so there seems to have been a lot of tarpon that have moved into the backcountry.  We hadn’t really had a strong consistent push of fish yet this summer but it looks like we may be getting it now and hopefully they’ll stick around for September and October.  I had my dad out the other day and we weren’t tarpon fishing we were looking for big snook, but we did happen to hook a couple tarpon while fishing for those.  We also saw quite a few jumping around and doing there thing so I figured it would probably be pretty good.  We were able to whack the mullet too and I will say at least for now the bait is plentiful back there so mullet seem easy to come by which is often the hard part about tarpon fishing in the off season.  Today we had a tarpon trip and we went back there with our bait.  Loads of tarpon just about as far as you could see!  We ended up hooking 7 I think and landed 4, and also caught a couple big sharks and a nice tripletail.  We even spent the last hour trying for a big snook so we likely could’ve had a few more tarpon bites had we stuck with that but my anglers each caught a couple and were good with that.  Anyways as mentioned it looks like we may have a really good September.  That was a good month for me last year and its nice being off season you really get it to yourself back there.  I don’t have much on the books but I’ll be taking some booking in September and Capt. Stephen will be available as well.  We’ll of course be sharing fishing info and bait so you’ll be in good hands regardless of which one of us takes you out.  But a 3/4 day will often do it and we like to hit it early departing at 6AM.  If you want to give it shot give me a shout and we’ll make it happen.

Capt. Rick Stanczyk
Instagram: @richardstanczyk
Facebook: Islamorada Tarpon Fishing
YouTube: Bud n’ Mary’s Marina

Mid July Tarpon Fishing Report

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