Capt. Rick Stanczyk's Islamorada Tarpon Fishing

2025 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.

We’re almost to February and that’s when we start catching some tarpon again somewhat consistently. There have been some around this January and we actually caught them on a few different occasions. The water was still pretty cold by general tarpon standards, in the mid 60 degree range. But we had a few flat calm, sunny days and the tarpon were out there flopping around and doing there spring-time thing. Anyways I feel as long as we get some warm, calm weather any time now they’ll likely be around. You just can’t bank on that though in January, but we should see more of it come February.

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

July 14, 2015 by Capt. Rick Stanczyk Uncategorized

Mid January Tarpon? Yes in Islamorada!

What’s the shot at catching tarpon in January is a question I’m often asked. I always tell people it’s possible depending on conditions but likely not to be expected when you are booking a few weeks or more out. However if we have a streak of warm, calm weather it can happen any time. Last week we had a pretty hard cold front and water temps dropped down into the mid 50s, about as cold as it normally gets here. Though it got nicer over the weekend and today it was completely slick calm and near 80 degrees. Even though the water temps were still in the low to mid 60s (typically I would say too cold for tarpon), once the tide started coming in tarpon popped up all over the place. That warm radiating sun can do some funny things to the fish. They were even biting too we didn’t spend too much time messing with them but we caught a big 90 lber and then a smaller 15 lber later on. Now had you been here a week ago the chances I would’ve said were pretty slim. Though knowing it was slick calm this week I would say there’s much more of a chance. Unfortunately you never really can tell but you get a much better idea when the time gets closer and you have an accurate idea of what the weather is going to do. So you can keep that in the back of your mind and ultimately it’s best to just fish the conditions. Anyways I think we’ll have another day or so of this and then we get some more north wind and more cool weather after that so they’ll likely disappear again for a bit. But its only another month or so when we really start catching tarpon fairly regularly often in February, as long as there aren’t any cold fronts and that is more likely as you get further into the spring. We’ve got some open days now and its not too busy yet until we get close to mid february timeframe. If you want to get out give us a shout – we can give the tarpon a try if its feasible and if not theres usually other good options like snook, redfish, drum, and more!

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

January 13, 2025 by Capt. Rick Stanczyk January Tarpon Rick Stanczyk

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

August 29, 2024 by Capt. Rick Stanczyk August Fishing Rick Stanczyk

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