Capt. Rick Stanczyk's Islamorada Tarpon Fishing

6/11/19 – Banner day with Pride and Cile! We headed out early and had a mixed bag game plan. We killed it yesterday so thankfully it wasn’t a high pressure situation. Cile had really wanted a permit, and I knew we had conditions to make it perhaps worth looking today. But sometimes it’s a lot of running and looking for these fish, so you have to be OK with both catching sometimes and taking that chance. Anyways we started out with tarpon early. Had good luck with that again and they both landed a nice tarpon, I caught 1 too as we had hooked a triple header! We got leader on one more before breaking off and we had a few others throw hooks. After that we decided to give it a go and Pride said he was good with whatever happened so we went cruising. Checked out a spot offshore and it was kind of overcast and we couldnt really see. But low and behold a school of permit swam right to us! We pitched a crab out and Cile was hooked up, and we threw a shrimp at another and it was a double header! We got both fish thankfully. After that though the predators caught on. We had several monster goliath grouper chasing everything we hooked. A couple got eaten, so we tried locking our drags down to prevent it and catch them quicker, but unfortunately this meant we broke a lot more off – but better than letting them get eaten! It was still lots of fun and awesome to see. We also caught a couple nice cobias. Then on the way home we got lucky and found another school of permit, this time all by themselves. We caught another double header, then Pride got to cast and catch one all on his own. Awesome day with awesome people. With the weather staying calm the next few days, fishing should stay pretty good I think!  4 for 7

6/12/19 – Lots of snook, a few reds, and a tarpon for Steve and Rich! Nice 3/4 day.  Was up in the same area I’d been the last few times for tarpon.  Today was different we hooked and caught one right away within 30 seconds… but didn’t get another bite after that.  We did see some fish, but they seemed to stop showing after a bit.  We moved once where we did see a few more, but gave it another 20 minutes there and nothing.  Since we only had a 3/4 day and wanted to get some action fishing in to, we left them after that for the snook and redfish.  Things can change in a hurry in fishing… i’m sure it’ll get good there again though and just have to find the next hot spot for now!  1 for 1

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

6/9/19 – Got out with Erik, Dan, and Marc today.  Weather was very iffy, lots of rain and thunderstorms around.  But we ventured out back.  Bait had been tough to come by, even shrimp for our other styles of fishing.  Luckily I had some shrimp and pinfish put away.  We looked for mullet early but no luck.  So we decided to focus mostly on snook and redfish for the day.  We got rained on a good bit, and had to dodge some lightning storms, but eventually it got nice and we had a really good day catching a ton of redfish and good handful of snook.  We didn’t really try much for tarpon but did give it a shot for the last 45 minutes or so with the 6 baits we had just close to home as weather wasn’t letting us get to where I wanted to go further.  Caught several jacks but never had a tarpon bite.  But again bait was hard to it was more of a long shot but we did have good fishing otherwise.  0 for 0

6/10/19 – Well we got lucky late in the afternoon yesterday the bait showed up and I drove back to the marina and was able to catch a good bit with a throw of the cast net.  So today we did get to try a bit more for tarpon.  We started with snook and redfish which was very good we had probably 40 reds and 15 snook, including a couple big snook on our pinfish.  The rain finally cleared and we decided to run further and check an area where we did good with tarpon last week.  We found a good load of them, and middle of the day we ended up catching 5 tarpon and jumped 5 more!  Incredible fishing for just a short hour and a half window.  We caught 2 double headers, and another single and we had 3 other bites while fighting that one we missed – just awesome!  Was able to round a few more baits up this afternoon too, so we’re in better shape on that front.  May give them a try again tomorrow.  5 for 10

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

Got out early and made a long run today.  We fished areas I hadn’t really been before.  We had looked in a few other on the way but saw no tarpon.  These were areas I had done well at last year but hadn’t really found them there good yet this year.  So we decided to push a little further.  I know tarpon did get in these spots, and with it slicking out I figured we could just run through and look and if we didn’t see anything we’d just backtrack and go to Plan B.  Well we got lucky and ran into a big wad of fish, rolling 5 at a time!  We set up and within 30 seconds I think we had hooked up!  We missed him but then a few minutes later we were on again and actually had a double header hookup!  Lost one, but we landed the other.  After that the craziness slowed down but still a good amount of fish rolling in the near distance.  We ended up catching 4 altogether and missed 2 others, and all before 9:30 AM.  After that we decided to go try for snook and other stuff.  Unfortunately a lot of boats in the areas I fished yesterday for snook, so we had to jump around but we picked a few fish also some redfish and trout as well.  So we ended up getting 3 backcountry SLAMS which was cool too.  All in all awesome day and always fun to discover new stuff!  That’s what the Contender Bay Boat is for getting to new far off areas, I’m sure I’ll be back there again.  4 for 6

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