Capt. Rick Stanczyk's Islamorada Tarpon Fishing

Lots of fun and lots of laughs with Jim, Scott, Gary, and Bill! We focused on tarpon most of the day. We found fish just about everywhere we went though they really were not biting on the falling tide. We got in several good scenarios with fish rolling around and going by us, and seemed like any minute it’d happen but just didn’t come to fruition. We waited for the tide change in our last area, and made one last stop on some fish and finally we hooked a nice 40 lber we landed! After that we moved again and had a big shark on and while battling that we hooked a nice 60 lber that we got! It was all smiles we really had to work for them but we made both bites count. Some times you have to live and die by the sword when you are all in for tarpon, and hopefully the persistence will pay off. Luckily we had plenty of sharks to keep us busy in between.  2 for 2

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

Got out with Scott and Jim today for a full day.  They really wanted tarpon and I told them it’d been hit or miss lately.  We decided to give it a couple hours early and then do some other stuff.  We didn’t see much early, don’t think we ever even for sure saw a tarpon.  Falling tide and a southwest wind, water wasn’t real pretty anywhere.  We checked several spots and fished in a couple of them.  A few sharks and that was it.  But luckily we were able to catch some good snook later in the day and some redfish too, so we ended up having a good day.  Some tarpon were caught later in the day on the incoming tide.   Sounds like that’s been a little better bet, unfortunately though right now that’s almost near the end of the fishing day.  Anyways, have the same crew tomorrow we may try some other spots early and then maybe again in the afternoon.  Seems you really have to put your time in right now and be OK with striking out if you really want that tarpon, but like i’ve been saying sometimes that’s tough when you know you can go catch other stuff.  But we’ll see what they wanna do tomorrow!  0 for 0

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

Got out with Ryan, Jen, Brody, and Hailey for a full day today.  We only tarpon fished for the first hour or so.  Had a little bit of leftover bait, and we spent about 45 minutes trying to catch some more in the backcountry.  Very tough to get ’em though, we did manage to catch a handful of baits, but looked in 3 different spots and didn’t see much.  We tarpon fished where we had found some fish last week but didn’t see a whole lot of them there either.  A few jumped off in the distance, we moved a few times trying to get lined up, but didn’t really feel like we were in ’em and I never saw any roll nearby.  We did get a few sharks though.  We went to Plan B and had a great day catching a good number of snook and redfish, and finished the day off with a whopper 18 lb snook and about an 18 lb permit!  That’s always nice about the backcountry this time of year is the other options.  0 for 0

Tarpon fishing for the time being is pretty hit or miss.  There are more fish around the local bridges or channels, however they aren’t often biting great during the days, and there aren’t a whole lot of other options nearby.  Baits been a little tougher too lately, so that leads to a tough combination.  As we get later into June however, the summer time pattern should set in and we should get a lot of the resident male tarpon back in many areas and they are usually hungry after all the spawning business, and the bait should get a lot easier too.

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