Capt. Rick Stanczyk's Islamorada Tarpon Fishing

Great day with Brandon and his wife Gosia visiting from Canada! They were after tarpon and didn’t mind mixing it up a little either. I told them that wouldn’t be a bad idea, as the tarpon had been a little hit and miss lately. We started looking for bait, which took a bit but we got into a good area and caught what we needed eventually. We looked for tarpon in a couple spots and didn’t see much. I decided to look elsewhere, where I thought I had seen some tarpon activity the day before but wasn’t 💯sure of. Anyways we got there and sure enough saw some signs of life. We set up and soon Gosia had a nice 50 lb tarpon on! She fought him well and we got some good pics. We lined up on a other fish and it was Brandon’s turn. He got a 35 lber to the hand! We had one more zip is that we missed, and then caught a couple sharks. Weather started to build and get near, but soon broke up and it was nice afterwards staying overcast for a while. We then found some redfish and had fun with them, and Gosia got a snook for a Backcountry slam! We finished the day chasing tripletail again, and caught quite a few I think 10 or so. Headed home after that, nice productive day and always lovely when everything you try works and things just click. Hasn’t been so easy lately especially with the poons, but that’s fishing! Last couple days I fished we did not target tarpon, but had plenty of reds, tripletails, and big lemon sharks.  2 for 2

Capt. Rick Stanczyk
Instagram: @richardstanczyk
Facebook: Islamorada Tarpon Fishing

Well got back out on the water today after being gone for the 4th/holiday weekend.  I spoke to a buddy who said he had a day of very good fishing but then was dealing with a lot of weather and lightning storms, which pushed a big body of fish out and since then he was struggling a bit but still finding a few fish.  Today we caught bait early on and it was fair, little easier to get bait on the morning incoming tides right now which we have for a few more days.  We checked some areas where we found tarpon before I left.  First stop we didn’t see much but did see a few on our electronics, but no bite and the sharks started to get bad as the tide was slowing down.  We decided to run further to an area where I was doing well last week too.  This spot has been consistent for me the last two weeks, hasn’t always been a ton of fish and sometimes you really hardly see anything, but it’s been good for a bite or two, or sometimes more than that.  Anyways we came in and did see a few fish on the electronics again.  Set up and we caught the start of the falling tide.  A few sharks, but then we had a tarpon bite we missed.  Dang!  Put them back out and had a few more sharks, then we got a nice 35 lb tarpon to stick that we got to the hand.  After that we were considering moving, but eventually saw one more tarpon roll and decided to give it some more time.  More sharks including a hammerhead which was cool, then we hooked a nice 65 lb tarpon!  This one gave us a good battle and we fought him for 45 minutes or so.  Got him on the leader to the boat several times, but couldn’t quite get him all the way rolled over for a pic before going through the leader.  But a good catch none the less.  After that we decided to move on, but the weather was moving in with some thunderstorms building.  We decided to just head on in before the weather got too bad, as the wind was picking up and it just looked like it was going to be struggle from there on out.  Anyways I have the same crew tomorrow, David from Scotland.  Will give it a try again we may make a long run up the coast who knows.  2 for 3

Capt. Rick Stanczyk
Instagram: @richardstanczyk
Facebook: Islamorada Tarpon Fishing

Well I normally don’t do any fly fishing however I had my dad and his friend Capt. Vic Gaspeny out for the day and to mix things up we brought the fly rods.  We had planned on looking for permit in the gulf, however we didn’t have great conditions with a stiff northwest breeze out there.  So we opted to look for some small tarpon in the morning.  I checked out an area I was fishing a lot last month but hadn’t been in a few weeks.  It was a bit nasty there with the wind direction, but in a more protected area we found a good amount of smaller 10 to 30 lb tarpon.  We set up and just started casting where we saw some rollers.  We jumped one on a pinfish, then they brought out the fly rods.  They each got a couple bites, and my dad hooked one that we got to the leader before jumping him off… about a 20 lb fish!  Also we got one more to eat a shrimp.  It was really good fishing to be honest!  After a bit of that though we drudged our way to the gulf but that was a mistake as it was still fairly rough.  We did see the permit a couple times, but they were not happy at all running hard and not interested in anything we tossed at them.  Oh well you can’t win them all, but it was fun to do something different.  I’ll be out of town for the weekend and it’s my birthday tomorrow, back to fishing on Monday.  Looks like we’ll be back to more typical summer time conditions by then with light southerly winds.  Hopefully the summer tarpon fishing will get into full swing!  1 for 6

Capt. Rick Stanczyk
Instagram: @richardstanczyk
Facebook: Islamorada Tarpon Fishing