Capt. Rick Stanczyk's Islamorada Tarpon Fishing

Got out with Brian (Jimmy) and his buddy Bruce today.  Slightly windier but not too bad overall the forecast is really not much wind for early March, which traditionally is one of our windiest months of the year!  That’s nice because we had pretty snotty weather for February with cold fronts and rain through the winter.  We had to catch a little bait to start I was running low so we searched in a few local honey holes.  Found a few but they were playing hard to get so we ran further in the backcountry.  Ran a different route than I normally go and we came across a few good looking muds with a few birds bombing.  First stop was kinda hard to get lined up on the mullets but the next mud over we ended up doing pretty well and caught a couple dozen with 4 or 5 casts of the net.  We then made our way to the backcountry and still got back there right around 8 AM.  Totally different feel today there were hardly any boats out there which was a welcome surprise.  I only saw maybe 4 or 5 all day back there, and the previous days its been a fleet of 25-30!  We didn’t find the tarpon right off the bat, we scanned around and looked where we had been getting them but it was kind of a ghost town.  We ran further up the beach and eventually saw one bust nearby us… stopped and put the trolling motor in and sure enough we started marking a good group of them.  But similar to yesterday they weren’t really showing too much every 10-15 minutes you’d see one.  Luckily I had the faith to keep looking around but that comes with experience.  We set up and it was good fishing we ended up actually getting 5 bites on our live pinfish and only one on one of our mullets.  Sure enough spend all that time and effort to get mullet and not end up needing it, but hey I’d rather have them just to be safe because thats our tried and true method!  Anyways the pin bites were fun we ended up landing 4 fish and got hands on 3 of them.  No shark activity today as far as big sharks went so that was very nice to see.  We really ended up sticking in the same general area all day only moving maybe a couple hundred yards a few times.  But much different than yesterday when we had to move 5 or 6 times just to get a bite to start.  Oh well that’s why they call it fishing and it’s different every day all you can do is give it your best.  The boys had a great time and I look forward to fishing with them again!

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

Got out again after some tarpon with Adam and his friend Matt visiting from UK.  Tarpon was on the list and we headed out into the everglades where we’d found a huge group of fish the last few days.  Conditions were still favorable slightly more wind but not bad at all.  We had good incoming tide until 10/1030 AM or so but got an early start to try and take advantage, as the falling tide afterwards has been very weak on the recent cycle and not much going on then.  Anyways the bite was a bit slower than the last few days we jumped around a good 4 or 5 times and had nothing but shark activity.  We were seeing a few tarpon all spread out but you could really feel the difference they just weren’t congregating and schooled up thick like they were the previous days.  Who knows if thats weather or something else they weren’t liking.  But finally we did get a bite and hooked a big dog that Matt fought well. He almost dumped the spool on us and acted very much like a big shark as he didn’t jump for the first 5-10 minutes.  But luckily we chased after him and get him the benefit of the doubt!  We got that fish on the leader but once we tried to put the wood to him for rolling him over, the hook pulled.  But a leader release none the less.  After that we wound up in a good school of fish where we ended up so we stopped and put them out right there.  Pretty soon we hooked another one on a live grunt which was cool!  Adam said he had a feeling that was gonna be the rod and he was right!  This fish we got up boatside and the boys got pictures I didn’t get any myself but we were trying to be quick as I’ve mentioned the sharks have been so bad you don’t want to mess around with pictures too long or too much.  That was about it for our tarpon action we fought a big shark for about 40 minutes after that and had a few more blacktips before the tide quite.  We tried for a big snook at the end of the day and did catch a few big jacks and other sharks on light tackle.  But anyways glad to have gotten a couple fish we definitely were keeping our eyes on the fleet and not nearly as many hooked or caught today overall but that’s fishing.  Hopefully tomorrow is a little better but the good news is they are there and we don’t have any cold in the forecast so you should still have a good shot regardless if you are fishing near now!  Give me a shout if you want to get out for tarpon this spring.

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

What a day for Bob, Tolim, and Sammy! Tarpon just got going this past weekend and it was good today. We did a little scouting yesterday while out with my dad and found quite a few jumping and flopping as far as you could see! Nice calm weather window for early March too now which is a welcome change from the cold of February! Anyways the boys all get to catch a tarpon and then some. No face grabs as we marked sharks on the sonar chasing literally every fish we caught, though thankfully none got eaten that we noticed. The one pictured we ended up towing about a half a mile to release him in slightly safer waters as he was worn out quick and would’ve been an easy meal. Sammy also had one almost jump up on the bow with him, got some good GoPro footage of that I’ll share later! Anyways it’s tarpon time here in the Florida Keys, the next few months should be good!

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