Capt. Rick Stanczyk's Islamorada Tarpon Fishing

Got out for Day 2 with David and Dana.  We headed out early and caught some bait in the backcountry.  The bait wasn’t in the same spot as the last few days so had to look around a little, but found a good school of it a mile or so away.  We loaded up and then searched for tarpon.  I checked an area where a buddy of mine said yesterday he had seen a bunch of tarpon.  I was hoping there’d be some larger size fish there, but we looked around for 10 minutes and never saw a sign of them.  It was slick calm so they shoul’ve been easy to see.  I didn’t run all over the places but just checked where he had seen them, so they could’ve been further up one of those channel areas, but I didn’t want to invest too much time.  We ran back where we had found them yesterday.  Today there was still a load of fish there, mostly small to medium size tarpon.  We ended up doing pretty well and had five bites and landed all five fish, finishing up with a double header!  Also plenty of bluefish, jacks, and a few large catfish.  By 9:30 or so though the bite was over.  We checked another channel nearby and saw a few tarpon there too, but the by-catch was too strong to get through.  We wrapped it up at 10:30 and headed back on our 3/4 day.  Great day again hopefully it continues to stay this good, back at it tomorrow.  5 for 5

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

Got out with David and Dana today for a 3/4 day trip.  We headed out early and caught some bait out back.  Didn’t find the huge school of tarpon nearby that was there a couple days ago, and I had yesterday off, so they may have moved on.  We did see a handful rolling but not enough to keep me there.  We ran and tried another area.  Did see a few more fish here and no boats which was nice, there were a couple boats in the previous area early!  We set up and caught a few random things jacks and such, then David got a nice tarpon!  We released him and set back up but no more bites aside from some little junk fish.  We moved and hit another channel, plenty of tarpon here too.  We had to work at it a little but eventually jumped a nice tarpon again, then Dana got one!  Smaller fish too a nice 30 lber.  We had another one eat a bait while we were following that one too which was funny, he came off the hook though.  We set back up and had a few big shark bites, some larger bull sharks.  Tons of catfish and bluefish and jacks it was hard getting through the little stuff.  Eventually we moved and then set back up on some rolling fish and David caught one more tarpon.  Great way to finish up and good fishing overall.  Back at it tomorrow with these two hopefully it’s jut as good.  3 for 6

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

Got out with Fraser and his son Jamie over from Scotland today for a full day tarpon fishing trip.  We devoted most of the day to tarpon.  We caught bait early on the last of the falling tide.  Easy bait again which has been nice!  We found a load of tarpon nearby so we didn’t have to venture to far.  An area where they were a few weeks ago but hadn’t been lately.  They didn’t bite real well early we had to put some time in and move around.  But eventually we got a few to respond and ended up catching three on the last of the falling tide, plus a few small sharks and bluefish.  When the tide quit we moved around to the other end of the channel and there were a lot more tarpon there.  Big ones here as well as medium.  We set up and got bit right away, catching another one for Jamie and then Fraser had one on that we lost after a few minutes.  We moved again and then got a double header!  Landed both fish but didn’t cooperate for the picture.  We then caught a few more, including another double header!  Jamie got a big bull shark and plenty of smaller sharks as well.  We finished the day with nine tarpon total, tying my best day of the year! We were going to give it a little more time but after the last double header they seemed to have disappeared!  I also wanted to hang on to a little bit of bait for my charter in a couple days.  We did look for permit for the last 30 minutes on a gulf spot but no luck, though did get a nice pompano!  Off tomorrow then back at it thursday.  Looks like tomorrow will be epic conditions again, I tried to move my Thursday trip to tomorrow but unfortunately they can’t do it.  Thursday may be fine but looks like we have a little south wind coming.  Light breeze but I know a couple weeks ago the south wind absolutely shut down our good fishing for a day, and gave me my only bust 0 tarpon day in recent memory!  Hopefully that will not be the case and luckily these people have another day on Friday which looks back to normally northeasterly wind very light.  9 for 12

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