Latest Fishing Reports - Page 4 of 353 - Capt. Rick Stanczyk's Islamorada Tarpon Fishing

End of August Tarpon Fishing Update for Islamorada

I hadn’t been fishing much lately so that’s why I haven’t posted much. But I had gotten out some the last week a couple times so wanted to share an update. The last week or so there seems to have been a lot of tarpon that have moved into the backcountry. We hadn’t really had a strong consistent push of fish yet this summer but it looks like we may be getting it now and hopefully they’ll stick around for September and October. I had my dad out the other day and we weren’t tarpon fishing we were looking for big snook, but we did happen to hook a couple tarpon while fishing for those. We also saw quite a few jumping around and doing there thing so I figured it would probably be pretty good. We were able to whack the mullet too and I will say at least for now the bait is plentiful back there so mullet seem easy to come by which is often the hard part about tarpon fishing in the off season. Today we had a tarpon trip and we went back there with our bait. Loads of tarpon just about as far as you could see! We ended up hooking 7 I think and landed 4, and also caught a couple big sharks and a nice tripletail. We even spent the last hour trying for a big snook so we likely could’ve had a few more tarpon bites had we stuck with that but my anglers each caught a couple and were good with that. Anyways as mentioned it looks like we may have a really good September. That was a good month for me last year and its nice being off season you really get it to yourself back there. I don’t have much on the books but I’ll be taking some booking in September and Capt. Stephen will be available as well. We’ll of course be sharing fishing info and bait so you’ll be in good hands regardless of which one of us takes you out. But a 3/4 day will often do it and we like to hit it early departing at 6AM. If you want to give it shot give me a shout and we’ll make it happen.

Capt. Rick Stanczyk
Instagram: @richardstanczyk
Facebook: Islamorada Tarpon Fishing
YouTube: Bud n’ Mary’s Marina

August 23, 2024 by Capt. Rick Stanczyk August Fishing Rick Stanczyk

Mid July Tarpon Fishing Report

Got back on the grind recently after going out of town for 10 days or so. So last Wednesday we tarpon fished locally around town for a 3/4 day. Had fairly good conditions all around with it being semi-overcast and a slight southeast breeze. I was thinking it might be a decent day. We ended up fishing local as my angler was a little worried about not making it the whole day and also from what I’d heard there hadn’t been a whole lot of tarpon in the backcountry yet. We found plenty of fish around the bridges though at least as many as I’d seen in the last month or so. However they were just not responsive we fished hard and moved around a good bit. Just no bites aside from a few cudas, jacks, and mutton snappers. Lots of small pickers eating our baits too which can be frustrating. Anyways once the tide quit after a couple of hours we ran back and tried some of the channels near home. Again we found fish in the 3 areas we fished… not tons but definitely a handful where we would’ve expected to get a bite or two. Though again no love they just weren’t wanting to play today. We ended up calling it a day around noon and headed home. Tough pill to swallow I hadn’t had a day all season where we hadn’t had at least a hookup but oh well it happens to the best of us and wasn’t for lack of trying!

Today we fished in the backcountry and we focused on snook for the first part of the day which was decent. The other day we had pretty good fishing for them though today was a little more work. We ended up looking for tarpon the last part of the day. Again we didn’t see much the day before when we were back there for tarpon but today we started looking around and sure enough a mile or so offshore we saw a couple of busts! Sometimes you just have to put some time in looking like that and all you have to do is see one and you might find a whole big school! Sure enough there were plenty more out there. They weren’t super happy though we had to jump around a lot and fish hard, picking through several large blacktip sharks. We finally jumped one fish and then about 30 minutes later we jumped another just didn’t stay on the hook! We grinded more and hooked a big lemon shark that dragged us around. When we landed the shark we marked a few more tarpon thankfully as we weren’t seeing a whole lot jumping around any longer. We put our last couple of baits out and we ended up hooking a double header shark and 50 lb tarpon! The tarpon stayed on for us this time thankfully and we got it up for a nice picture… great way to end the day.

I’m leaving for the Bahamas tomorrow and will be gone a week or so but will be back the following week and likely available for a few trips if anyone wants go starting around the 22nd. Can’t promise what it will be like but as mentioned it was good to see a larger group of fish back there. Hopefully they’ll stick around and I don’t think too many anglers are messing with them as they were in a not-as-much fished area, plus it’s not too busy with fisherman now. Capt. Steve and Capt. Trent are both available as well and I know they’ve still been having some luck with some local tarpon on half day trips. We’re keeping stocked up on mullet as best we can so if you want to set up a trip short notice give me a shout and we’ll get you out there.

Capt. Rick Stanczyk
Instagram: @richardstanczyk
Facebook: Islamorada Tarpon Fishing
YouTube: Bud n’ Mary’s Marina

July 14, 2024 by Capt. Rick Stanczyk July Fishing Rick Stanczyk

End of June Tarpon Report for Islamorada

Well got out one last day here and am out of town for a couple weeks now until Mid July. But the winds finally laid down over the weekend here as it blew a good 20mph+ all week last week. Between that and all the rain the week before, the backountry tarpon that we had found a couple weeks ago still hadn’t shown up real thick back there yet. So we stuck to the bridges today. It was calm and very hot but luckily we had semi-overcast conditions for part of the day to help with the heat. We actually saw a good number of tarpon around all day long. They weren’t pulling us out of the boat though. But we fished down around one of the bridges I’ve been fishing lately and we caught a couple tarpon and jumped one more, plus had another good zip or two that were possibly tarpon. That was all from 7 AM till about 10:30 AM. We also had a few big jack crevelles and mutton snappers so all in all it was good action with some tarpon mixed in. After that though things died down and we went a good hour or more without much of anything happening. I decided to run back up near home and fish the local channels which I hadn’t really done all year. Sure enough we found some tarpon in an area where Capt. Steve had pointed me too and said he had some luck there a few days ago. We ended up catching two more tarpon on our last 4 baits! Good way to finish for sure. No facegrabs today we came close a few times but the fish were just being stubborn and we had one early on get eaten by a bull shark which hadn’t happened much lately but goes to show there are still a few around to worry about. But great day we ended up catching four tarpon and jumped off one other, with possibly a couple other zips but who knows what they were.

Again as mentioned I’m out of town now for a bit but Capt. Steve and Capt. Trent will be running the show. They’ve still been getting on tarpon lately and half day trips are totally doable if you don’t want to deal with the heat. As we approach July I’m hoping the backcountry tarpon fishing will turn back on… I think it will once the weather stabilizes which it seems to be doing now. July is often one of my favorite months for those resident fish… much less fishing pressure and of course in the backcountry there are shots at snook, tripletail, redfish, and more. Give me a shout if you want to get out. I may personally have some days available towards the end of July but won’t know until a couple weeks.

Capt. Rick Stanczyk
Instagram: @richardstanczyk
Facebook: Islamorada Tarpon Fishing
YouTube: Bud n’ Mary’s Marina