Capt. Rick Stanczyk's Islamorada Tarpon Fishing

Tried for tarpon a bit today with Adam and his dad Jim.  Conditions were pretty favorable early with a light wind, though south not my favorite direction.  We ran over a herd of mullet first thing and were able to catch a bunch.  I had high hopes with a bunch of bait!  We checked some channels, and found a few tarpon though not a ton.  We had a shark on first, and then Adam jumped a nice tarpon while we fought that!  Unfortunately that was the last tarpon action we had.  We fished until the tide quit and then caught a bunch of redfish while we waited for it to change.  Then we tried a couple other areas where we saw tarpon in both, but just not in a good mood.  The winds kicked up a little more and the water still on the chilly side.  Just couldn’t get them going but we did catch quite a few sharks.  We decided to bail on it and still had plenty of time to catch some tripletail and finish up the day with a few snook.  0 for 1

The tarpon fishing is just hit or miss right now, and again there are so many other good options it’s hard sometimes to dedicate the day to it… so unless I have clients who really want to go all in, we are usually just giving it an hour or so shot unless it looks like it’ll be really good.  We do have another cold front tomorrow night, not getting super cold just down to low 60s, but won’t help the tarpon fishing any.  Though it should be a good thing for later in the season, as sometimes when things get started super early we have a tougher May and June.  But we’ll see what happens back at it tomorrow.

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

2/10/19 – Well we gave it a shot for a short while both today and yesterday for some tarpon.  Didn’t really expect too much as the winds were cranking 20-25mph yesterday, and a good 20 mph today.  But the guys wanted to give it a shot.  Yesterday we tried some of the areas where we had caught a couple fish last week.  We only tried for about 45 minutes, I gave a good look around and we never for sure even saw a tarpon.  We did get a few sharks though.  But we caught plenty of other fish including a bunch of mangrove snapper for dinner, some spanish mackerel, and tons of redfish to finish up the day.  Nice thing right now there is so much other good fishing, you can usually have an easy out if the tarpon aren’t cooperating.  0 for 0

2/11/19 – Today my guys wanted to try and catch some snook as they hadn’t caught those before.  But they didn’t mind spending a little time for tarpon if possible.  I had not been way up the coast yet and wanted to see if anything was up there tarpon wise.  I also knew the redfish and snook fishing had reportedly been pretty good, so I felt OK taking the gamble to see and falling back on the other stuff.  We did find a decent school of tarpon early on, but smaller resident size fish in the 20 to 40 lb range… not the big herd of 80+ lb migratory fish I was expecting.  We set up and they kind of spread out and left as soon as we had baits out.  A few hung around, but we did not get a bite, and after 30 minutes or so we didn’t see many signs of them.  Anyways after that we left them alone and caught plenty of redfish, a good handful of snook, some small goliath groupers, some nice sea trout, and a few other odds and ends.  0 for 0

May try to give the tarpon a whirl tomorrow, but as of now it’s real hit or miss.  Should get better when the winds calm down and it warms up slightly more.  But if you really want one and are willing to invest the day to it, it’s definitely possible.

Well got out for my first official tarpon trip of the year today with Garrett, Kim, and Finley.  Garrett was wanting to fish with me last year but I was already booked, so this time he booked well in advance.  We were planning on mixing it up a little with the fishing, but tarpon was definitely on his list.  The day was nice with a little northeasterly wind, not too bad.  We ran out and caught some spanish mackerel to start the day.  That kept us busy for an hour, and then we decided to look for some tarpon.  I checked some of the usual early season haunts, and the first place we stopped we saw a good slug of tarpon which was nice to see!  Within about 10 minutes, we were hooked up and Garrett had a nice 70 lber on that we landed!  A few good jumps and a show, and got some good boatside pictures.  After that we moved around a little, and the tarpon thinned out somewhat.  We caught a few sharks including a monster blacktip then the tide quit.  We decided to try to catch a few redfish while waiting for the tide to come in, which we caught one.  Then a buddy of mine phoned me and said the tarpon were starting to get active again.  We ran back to another area nearby, and again within 10 minutes, Kim had a nice tarpon on of roughly the same size 70 lbs or so.  We fought him and got the fish boatside as well, though unfortunately he came unbuttoned while we were trying to get pictures but a good catch none the less.  After that a few more sharks including a big lemon shark and it was time to go home.  Well a successful start to tarpon season, looks like thing will stay warm so the fish should stick around unless we have a hard cold front.  If the wind cranks it may slow it down a little depending where you are trying to fish, but I’d say it looks like a solid start to the season.  I’m not focused on tarpon for my charter tomorrow, we may give it a whirl for a short amount of time, but we’ll see.  Then I’m off Friday and Saturday.  Full week next week, but I have openings the 17th and 20th of this month, and some days still open in March.  Give me a shout if you want to get out after the silver king!  2 for 2

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