Capt. Rick Stanczyk's Islamorada Tarpon Fishing

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

Well back from vacation had some nice time off the water.  Yesterday I fished and things had gotten very tough since I was gone.  We caught plenty of bait – mullet and nice pilchards.  Though did not see any tarpon in the backcountry, caught several blacktip sharks.  Then tried fishing with the pilchards and only had 2 snook bites out of about a dozen spots I fished.  They really moved around!  Today I had a half day and used some of the bait we caught yesterday that I kept on ice.  Incoming tide and pretty weedy, not great conditions.  We did not see any tarpon until the last 30 minutes.  I saw a free jumper and we set up near him, saw another fish roll, and within 20 minutes we had one on!  A nice fish almost 100 lbs.  We also caught a couple saw fish which was cool and had a couple big barracudas grab baits and go airborn before cutting us off.

Capt. Rick Stanczyk

More stellar fishing.  We left the dock early again, had to catch bait today but it was a quick stop.  One throw of the net and we had 3 dozen nice fresh silver mullet, all we would need.  Ran to the tarpon area and we were fishing by just after 7:00, nice!  It wasn’t red hot in the beginning as it has been.  The last several days we’d been getting a bite within the first few minutes which is always a nice thing.  Today we sat for close to 40 minutes before getting a bite.  Though we finally did.  Ended up catching 3 nice tarpon, one close to 85 lbs and the others in the 40-55 lb range.  July has been fantastic for tarpon fishing in the everglades.  We finished the day up catching some nice pilchards for bait, and caught about 10 good snook on them.  Well really 9.5 – one got eaten by a shark!  The rain had chased us around a good bit, but finally was able to get to the spot I wanted to and it paid off.

My last trip for a while – going on vacation should be back in town next Tuesday! Will give the tarpon a little break.

Capt. Rick Stanczyk