Capt. Rick Stanczyk's Islamorada Tarpon Fishing

Well its getting later in the summer.  Thankfully mini lobster season is over the last couple days it has been PACKED here and lots of googans swimming in the water making things very dangerous for boat operators.  It’s time for august tarpon fishing in islamorada and the rest of the keys.  Today we ran way in the backcountry off the beaches of the mainland.  Found some good tarpon we went 2 for 5 back there, catching a couple smaller 30-40 lb fish.  We did lose a big 100ish lber my angler simply had too much pressure as he palming the spool with the fish way out.  Remember we fish light drags for a reason in the beginning for tarpon, more pressure is not the answer especially in open water we simply chase the fish and when he settles down then we apply more pressure.  Your not going to stop him with drag it just makes it much easier for them to throw the hook!  We got into some mongo snook too which was pretty cool catching 4 snook in the 10 to 15 lb range.  Later in the day we caught some pilchards and for the last hour we caught some smaller snook and also a couple of baby tarpon in the 5-10 lb range, awesome!  So great day 4 tarpon august is off to a great start here in the florida keys!

I did a little bit of tarpon fishing on 7/29/14 and things were tough that day we had no bites in the morning just a couple sharks, not even much action with them.  We ended up getting into a few snook to end our day and we jumped one baby tarpon on pilchards.  So was very nice to see fishing today be very productive hopefully it stays that way.  The wind switching back to the east I think helped a lot, southwest wind when it is hot is not really good for much!

Capt. Rick Stanczyk

Well yesterday afternoon I fished my soon to be mother in law, Ginger Baxter.  We just went out for a couple hours in the afternoon to try to catch a tarpon.  Tough conditions very calm, hot, and lots of jetskis zipping about as it is the weekend before mini lobster season.  But we managed to get a nice 80 lb fish!  A few good jumps and we got him boatside, though he cut us off around a bridge before we could really get him up for a good picture.  We only fished those couple hours with the baits we had from a few days before then went in to get dinner and enjoy sunset!  Today we fished all day back in the everglades.  Tough fishing we saw a lot of tarpon this morning in a couple spots.  But the suckers wouldn’t bite this morning.  I had plenty of fresh mullet too.  We caught a big bull shark and then ran further off the mainland to catch the start of the incoming tide.  We got lucky and caught a tarpon right on the tide change about a 30 lber.  Then a few more sharks, had to shuffle around with the big giant patches of weeds, and finally got set back up and some more shark activity and then finally another nice tarpon of 60 lbs or so to finish the day.  I talked to another friend of mine fishing and he said fishing was very tough as well they had two tarpon bites all day and caught them both as well.

Capt. Rick Stanczyk

Today the fishing got much better.  Caught a few mullet early in the morning.  They’ve been a bit tougher on the early morning falling tides though I’ve been getting them.  Yesterday we had plenty of bait and moved around a little bit, found a good school of fish.  But they would not eat for us we caught some sharks.  Today was different I ran further towards the gulf and tried some areas.  Did not see much for rollers but we caught 2 nice fish of 30 and 60 lbs in the morning on the last of the falling tide.  We then did some other stuff, and went and tried to catch pilchards in another channel.  Low and behold we saw tarpon rolling while trying to chum bait up, so I threw some of our last baits out and we got a couple bites out of them and caught another fish of 60 lbs.  Finished the day with some nice snappers for dinner and some trout for action.  Good fishing 3 out of 4 tarpon.

Capt. Rick Stanczyk