Capt. Rick Stanczyk's Islamorada Tarpon Fishing

Got out with Bill and Alicia today, return customers of mine down from Pennsylvania who also have a place here.  Bill wanted a tarpon and Alicia wanted to catch some fish to eat.  I told them the fishing had been a little tough overall lately but we could give both a shot hopefully.  We left a little early and fished some local spots as I had a tough day yesterday in the backcountry finding any numbers of tarpon and I knew a few were caught around town yesterday.  We found a few early on in the first stop and had a couple blow ups on our live baits!  No bites there but we did finally hook a fish on another rod that Bill got to catch!   A nice 90 lb tarpon, his first and he was thrilled!  We got him on the leader several times and some good video of him but unfortunately he broke off making a big run off the leader.  After that we tried to hunt around and find some eating fish for Alicia but it was a little difficult.  Couldn’t find any snappers but we did catch some mackerels and a few other species.  We tried for tarpon again later in the day I checked a few of the bridges but did not see much in the way of signs of tarpon life.  We found a few more in the area we fished in the morning, but did not get another bite though we caught a big jack crevelle.  Anyways glad we got Bill his tarpon.  Looks like the winds will subside even more tomorrow and we should have a very nice weak.  Hopefully with the calming of the weather some fish will show back up in the backcountry!  1 for 1

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

Got out with Gareth and Claudia visiting from over in South Africa.  Gareth really wanted to try and catch a tarpon.  We dedicated the day to it.  It was a little nasty out, scattered showers in the AM and a hard 20 knot southeast wind.  Bait was easy we loaded the well with fresh bait and headed out into the backcountry.  We found a few tarpon in the first channel we fished, somewhere I hadn’t fished for tarpon yet this year.  No bites out of them but a few sharks and a couple big sting rays.  Not a ton of tarpon but we definitely had a couple roll around us and saw a few more on the sonar.  After the incoming tide quit we moved out to the channel where we had caught one yesterday to catch the start of the falling tide.  Nothing going on here though we never saw a fish and didn’t have any bites.  I then took a gamble and hit some of the open water areas I like to fish as there had been tarpon out there a few times.  It was pretty rough we didn’t see any tarpon showing, but we did have good shark activity out here too with some big blacktips, bull sharks, and toothy grey sharks.  Tough day for the tarpon but looks like the winds will start to subside tomorrow and we may have a very nice week coming up.  Calm and warm should mean a lot more tarpon should show up.  0 for 0

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

Got out with John, John, and Joe down from NJ for the day.  The guys really wanted to try to catch tarpon and I told them it’s kind of an all day affair right now to have a shot at one, and they were game.  We caught bait early which was easy enough.  Howling east winds made the bait fishing easier for sure, but not necessarily easier for the tarpon fishing!  We headed out back and tried the channels where we caught them a couple days ago.  Not much early on we had the last of the incoming tide.  After 45 minutes or so though it started falling but we still didn’t see much.  I gave it some more time and looked around but nothing looked promising so we tried another channel.  A couple other boats set up here, nobody doing much of anything.  We gave that an hour and nothing happened so we went back to the first area as I figured maybe with the tide running for a bit now some fish would show up.  As soon as we got there, a boat was there fighting a tarpon so that was a good sign.  Someone I knew, so we pulled into that general area and a couple fish came up and rolled straight away.  We gave it a good 30 minutes but no bite, the other boat did jump another one though.  We had to move around a little and got in front of what seemed to be the body of fish.  After another 30 or 40 minutes,  I was about to move out but then we hooked one!  A nice big 120 lber, Joe landed him in about a 20 minute battle.  I didn’t get any good pictures as we broke her off on the leader, but had it next to the boat sevearl times and the boys got some good video I think.  We moved around a little after that to an area where we had seen a free jumping tarpon, but no more tarpon bites.  We did end up catching a lemon shark and had one other shark bite us off.  So overall slow day but we made the tarpon happen so it was a good one!  1 for 1

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