Capt. Rick Stanczyk's Islamorada Tarpon Fishing

Got out again with Dave & Dave for some tarpon fishing in the florida keys.  We had enough bait leftover again so we got right to fishing.  I tried a different channel where a buddy of mine had caught them good yesterday later in the day.  Saw a few rolling there but no dice, and not many fish really either.  I then ran to where we got them in the morning the previous day and boy things changed.  We saw one little group of fish roll a few times, but that was about it.  Was pretty calm too so I’m sure we would’ve seen some more activity if a slug of them were in there.  Anyways we had a couple sharks and that was it.  I then ran towards flamingo and we saw one roll as I was running.  I shut down quickly and looked around and saw several rolling in the area… just what I was hoping for!  We set up and had to move around a little bit, but eventually got them going.  We ended up catching three out of five in about 45 minutes, good fishing for sure!  All little guys in the 20-40 lb range.  After that we tried out off the beach again like the previous day, though no love just a few more shark bites.  Wind definitely picked up blowing 15-20 now and suppose to continue for the next several days plus a lot of rain forecast… We will see hopefully we can get out but fishing may get a little tougher for a few days.  3 for 5

Capt. Rick Stanczyk

Got out for a 3/4 day today with Dave and Dave.  They are down from Baltimore and were looking to hook up with the ‘silver king.’  We left out early a little after 6 and headed into the backcountry.  I already had a load of bait I bought from the bait guys so we didn’t need to worry about that on the way, though will be starting to have to concentrate on that a bit more soon as they will be stopping soon.  We found some tarpon in one of the backcountry channels and set up there.  We moved around a bit but ended up hooking and landing 3 tarpon in the 40 to 60 lb range, it was good fishing!  After a couple hours the tide quit and we ran out towards the beach to check some areas out there.  I didn’t see much for busting or jumping fish, but we stopped on some numbers and gave it a whirl.  We soon jumped a tarpon after about 5 minutes.  We caught several small blacktips and hooked a couple other tarpon, one of which we landed to end the day.  Both Dave’s got to land a couple tarpon it was all you could ask for!  Tomorrow we are out again, looks like we are going to be having some nasty weather with the low pressure system out in the gulf after the weekend.  Hopefully it doesn’t mess us up too bad as fishing is starting to get consistently good!  4 for 6

Capt. Rick Stanczyk

June started off with a bang.  I had Chris down with his dad and brother out fishing for tarpon.  We were originally going to do a half day though I told the guys a 3/4 day would be much better as we can make the run into the everglades and have time to fish a couple different areas.  They said that was cool so we did it.  I had bait leftover from yesterday.  We found some tarpon in some channels around flamingo, saw several roll right as we pulled up.  Soon we hooked a tarpon but jumped him off and caught a big lemon shark.  Later we hooked another tarpon and we landed him a nice 70 lb fish.  After that things slowed down a little we caught a big jack, saw a few more tarpon roll and tried to get in front of them, but no more bites.  The tide quit and we went to spot #2.  Saw a few tarpon rolling once in a while, and caught several more sharks.  Then we hooked up a nice tarpon and landed him.  A few more sharks and then we hooked our final tarpon of the day and landed him as well.  All in all a great day, I think the summer time fishing will be very good again this year!  3 for 4

Capt. Rick Stanczyk