Capt. Rick Stanczyk's Islamorada Tarpon Fishing

Well things have finally started to warm up and we’ve had some calm weather so a few tarpon have started to show up.  It’s not red hot fishing yet but they are around and if you put time in you can catch ’em.  We tried several areas and did not see a whole ton of fish, there were some way back off the mainland that were making their way into the backcountry it seemed.  We didn’t have much luck back there we did catch plenty of sharks and a couple cobia and some tripletail.  But we gave it at shot close to home in the afternoon and saw a handful of fish rolling in the local channels.  They were interested in live bait only we had two bites on live mullets, one we managed to keep stuck and landed a nice 60 lber.  The mullet are showing up as well no massive schools that I’ve seen but good numbers in the usual areas we look.  It should get better and better and boy are we ready for tarpon season here.  1 for 2

Capt. Rick Stanczyk

January has been fairly warm here this winter.  I haven’t tried a lot but there had been tarpon around a lot of days.  We finally had our first real cold front a little over a week ago.  Though since then it warmed back up however we are getting cold weather again tonight and the next several nights.  Today we found some tarpon after fishing for snook/reds all day.  They were very active busting on lots of smaller bait fish and shrimp.  We worked them for a while, with no bites and catching a few snook in the mean time.  Though when the tide switched and started to trickle in, we got a couple bites.  I jumped one off on a shrimp that was just laying near the bottom on slack tide.  Then my angler Steve was casting near the mangroves and just slowly retrieving and he got slammed. He landed a nice 30 lb tarpon we got to the boat but then he jumped and threw the hook.  Anyways great way to end our day and Steve got a SLAM – snook, redfish, and tarpon.  We may have an early start to our normal tarpon season if things stay warm.  Perhaps as early as first week of February or maybe even end of January.  Drop me a line if you are interested or going to be around.  1 for 2

Capt. Rick Stanczyk

Was out yesterday we came across a school of baby tarpon actively feeding on the hard incoming tide.  The weather has been very warm still, have yet to have any significant cool weather.  So there has been a few tarpon about.  I haven’t been focusing much on them but we did give it a try on this day.  We hooked two fish though unfortunately one jumped off right away, the other we fought for a minute but he got us broke off in some mangroves.  Anyways it was fun to see and good action on the light tackle rods with smaller 20 lb fish.  If the weather patterns stay like this we will likely have an early tarpon season.  Last year we had a window in January with some good fishing for larger ‘winter time’ fish, maybe that will be the case again this year.  0 for 2

Capt. Rick Stanczyk