Latest Fishing Reports - Page 2 of 352 - Capt. Rick Stanczyk's Islamorada Tarpon Fishing

2/7/2025 February Tarpon starting off with a bang!

Got out with my dad and his friend Pete along with Capt. Stephen who rode along to see what was happening. We planned to tarpon fish as the conditions over the last week have gotten right for some good early spring time fishing. That usually means lighter, warmer wind conditions and water temperatures. We had a nice 15 mph easterly breeze and water temps in the mid 70s. Steve was good enough to catch us some mullet the other day which are starting to show up thick as well. That’s often a good sign the tarpon fishing will start getting right too. So there were thousands of tarpon when we got out there – just jumping, rolling, and splashing all about. It really was incredible. We had periods where we could mark 20+ fish on the sonar… just pods after pods of them coming by. We fished our mullets as well as drifted with live pinfish and both worked pretty well. We caught two smaller fish in the 30-40 lb range and got one up for a picture. Then Pete caught a big 90 lber on the dead bait we fought for a while. He was also lucky enough to get a big bull redfish first thing in the morning. We hooked several other tarpon as well I think we had a good 7 or 8 bites for the day. About as good as you could ask for especially for the first week of February! Right now there are no cold fronts on the horizon so I’m sure those fish will keep doing there thing. And honestly I feel like with how many were back there in January when the water temps were still in the mid 60s, they may not care much if a front comes through unless it gets ridiculously cold. It’s not super busy yet though spring time starts to get that way so if you want to fish for tarpon and can make it down in the next couple of weeks, we have availability. Give us a shout and remember you can book online now through Vally!

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

February 7, 2025 by Capt. Rick Stanczyk February Fishing Rick Stanczyk

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