Capt. Rick Stanczyk's Islamorada Tarpon Fishing

6/10/16 – Today I had Mike and his son Mike out again.  We caught bait in the morning and gave the tarpon a shot early.  Very weak tide so we didn’t stay for long but they wanted to give snook a shot.  We had good snook action and caught a baby tarpon while doing that too which was very cool.  We tried the tarpon again later on the falling tide in the afternoon, and in the last hour caught a couple nice fish of 50 lbs or so.  Great day of fishing!  3 for 3

6/11/16 – Today I had Sarah and Barry who fished with me last year coming all the way from across the pond.  Bait was easy first thing we caught plenty of fresh mullet.  Fishing was difficult we found a decent group of tarpon in the first stop but they didn’t bite for us unfortunately.  Next stop there were tons of tarpon in the channel however very finicky again.  We had them tail slapping right behind the boat but never touched the baits.  We put live ones out too but not a sniff, though a shark did try to eat it.  We did catch a few small sharks and a big ray.  Anyways tried the snook again and the bait was easy but snook fishing was slow we caught 1 and lost 1.  Then tried the tarpon again the last hour on the falling tide, but no dice we caught a few more sharks to finish the day.  Hopefully they’ll bite better tomorrow!  0 for 0

Got out today for a full day and went back into the everglades.  We caught plenty of mullet on the way it was nice the bait was very cooperative.  We jumped a tarpon off right away in the first spot, then not much else.  Caught a few big sharks after that in another spot, then some smaller sharks in the next.  Had a tarpon jump right by the boat we swore was hooked, but the lines never moved.  Then we finally caught a tarpon a small 40 lber though happy to get one!  After that a few more sharks, and then the last spot the same thing happened we had two tarpon jump next to the boat.  But again they never touched the bait or anything, very weird that doesn’t happen often and for it to happen three times???  Anyways we finished up with a few more sharks, good action throughout the day and happy to have landed a tarpon!  1 for 2

Capt. Rick Stanczyk

Had another half day again today it was pretty nasty blowing 25mph out of the southwest.  We tried to do what we’ve done the last few days and fish the local channels.  Not much luck today though we caught a few nurse sharks and had a barracuda eat us off, no tarpon bites.  We saw some fish in both areas we fished but just no luck.  A couple boats did catch some that we saw, though most did not.  Anyways the wind is laying down this afternoon and by tomorrow it’s suppose to die to 5-10 mph, which is how it should be this time of year.  I’ll likely be going into the backcountry tomorrow hopefully things will have had time to settle down by then and clean up.  0 for 0

Capt. Rick Stanczyk