Capt. Rick Stanczyk's Islamorada Tarpon Fishing

March is almost over and unfortunately so is the flat calm gorgeous weather window we had.  Yesterday it kicked up out of the southwest as we had an approaching cold front.  It didn’t get too cold thankfully last night but tonight it looks to drop down to 60 or so.  But it was still blowing 20-25 mph out of the North this morning.  Anyways we cut our day to a half day and fished mostly out on the patch reefs out front.  We were able to get plenty for dinner including some nice porgy, a few choice hogfish, and a couple big yellow bar jacks that fought well!  We just tried the tarpon for the last hour.  We found a few in a little area where one of the channels dump out into another channel. We set up and had some shark activity, and eventually hooked a nice little 35 lb tarpon.  Landed him and called it a day.  I’m taking another day off tomorrow and looks to be a a good one to take off with the cold weather we’ll be getting tonight and the high winds likely tomorrow.  1 for 1

Fishing stayed hot today we were suppose to get some weather but it left us alone for the day.  Tonight I think we will get some rain though as we have a cold front coming in and right now moisture is pushing through ahead of it.  The wind was blowing a bit this morning southwest and falling tide right into it.  We fished around some of the bridges where I heard yesterday the fishing was very good.  I took yesterday off my first day off in a month.  But I had some dead bait already good to go and we caught a few live ones early this morning.  We put our first bait out and it instantly got blown up by a tarpon.  We missed him and eventually hooked one however it got cut off in somebodys anchor line.  Some inconsiderate person tried to anchor right down below me in between my baits, I asked them to politely move which they did though only about 20 feet over.  I figured as much would happen and they gave no effort to try to pass the line over the anchor line.  So we left and we did catch a couple fish after that and had plenty of other bites we missed.  I really lost count as it was constant action, I don’t think we went more than 10 minutes without a fish blowing up a bait.  Lots of ‘cheap shots’ too where they completely missed the bait, it was fun!  2 for 8

Capt. Rick Stanczyk

Lots of tarpon again in the backcountry.  Fished our bait from the last few days.  We hooked up right away a nice 35 lb fish we caught quickly.  After that sharks moved in we caught several and moved out of the channel.  Saw a fish free jump and set up near that, saw a few roll and soon enough we were hooked up again.  A big moose again of 120 lbs or so.  We fought him for an hour or so, got him on the leader but he wouldn’t cooperate for a boatside picture and we broke him off.  After that we had one more tarpon go after a bait as I was reeling it in.  And then it was kind of over with, everything stopped and it was around 11:00.  We went out in the gulf and caught a nice 18-20 lb permit!  Great day!  2 for 2.

Capt. Rick Stanczyk