Capt. Rick Stanczyk's Islamorada Tarpon Fishing

Great day fun fishing with my dad, Rich, and Mike. Business has slowed down and all of a sudden I have about the next two weeks open. Fishing has been ridiculously good with stellar conditions, so I couldn’t help myself and figured we’d go have some fun! We got into the tarpon good early on and started the day jumping off a couple smaller fish, then Mike got a nice 60 lber and while fighting that, Rich got about a 20 lber for a double header! Unfortunately the big one didn’t stick around for a picture when we got him on the leader. Most of those tarpon were small, which we are legally allowed to lift up for pictures (very carefully and quickly of course). The big ones we don’t do that with we leave them in the water for a quick boatside picture. After that we caught one more and then hooked something that was fighting a little different. I said good chance it’s a big snook and sure enough it was, close to a 20 lber! Just spectacular love seeing those big fish like that we don’t catch them like that every day. After that we moved around a little and found some hard bottom structure that I like. There were more tarpon here and we soon caught another one! After that we hooked up a double header, a smaller tarpon and something that was fighting a little strange. I told the crew that a few days ago there were some porker redfish out there, and sure enough up came a big 25 lb redfish! That trick didn’t work the rest of the day though trying to call them out, but it was very cool to see those big redfish and snook. We caught a couple more tarpon there and a few sharks and then left those fish alone after that. We ran around the mainland areas just checking out a few spots and seeing what things looked like. We found a few small redfish and snook and a black drum in one area, so we caught 3 backcountry SLAMS which was awesome! After that we decided to head on back and caught some bait on the way home. But what a day landing 6 tarpon, and a good handful of snook and redfish including two porkers of each species!  6 for 8

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

Another banner day today with Ralph and Greg down from NJ! I got in touch with the boys last night and they were on vacation visiting the Keys. Tarpon was a request so I told them we have had good fishing as of late, but the bait catching has been a little bit of a struggle. Though if they were willing to go early and put the time and effort into the bait it could pay off handsomely! We opted for that and headed out. Bait was tough of course but it was better than yesterday. We had to work very hard at it, making lots of mess and getting mud and weed all over the boat trying to net the bait. But after a few throws it started to get a little easier and we got a couple good tosses with some good numbers of bait fish. We headed out to the areas where we found tarpon yesterday and they were right where we left them! First two baits out we missed a double header, then the next two baits out we hooked a double header and landed both fish! Nice start the boys each landed a tarpon within the first 20 minutes or the trip! After that we jumped off several more tarpon, got a big blacktip shark, then Ralph landed another tarpon. We moved around a bit and jumped off a few more tarpon. They just aren’t staying on the hook very well right now and not super aggressive bites, rather ones where they jump and spit it as soon as they feel anything so you have to hope to get lucky that the hook sticks them before they do that. Anyways after a move Greg hooked into a nicer size fish and landed a good 60 lb tarpon! After that the tide stared to slow down and I knew the boys had requested to try and catch some dinner. So we left the tarpon alone and caught a bunch of trout though most were fairly small. We did make one more stop and got a nice mangrove snapper on our artificials for a little appetizer for the guys at least, then it was time to head on home. Tarpon fishing is still very good and the winds are suppose to slick off tomorrow for the foreseeable future. The fall condition feels like it’s here and lots of tarpon are around. I had a cancellation Thursday due to the hurricane hitting the Carolinas, so I’m available. Right now I even have a load of bait fish ready to go and as I said the baits not easy right now – so you couldn’t ask for a better opportunity than that for a tarpon fishing trip. Give me a ring let’s go fishing!  4 for 14

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

What a day for Jeremy and Roy! They were visiting from Colorado, Jeremy had fished with me before a few years ago. They also had a couple buddies fishing with Capt. Bill Bassett. I talked to the guys last night as I had just got back from vacation to see what our game plan would be. They were very interested in tarpon which I said had been OK lately though we looked to have good conditions with the wind laying down. Bait has been a little tough as of late though so I knew that would be the hard part. We headed out early and gave it a good hard effort and were able to come up with enough bait to fish with. Not easy by any means but we had what we needed. After that we checked some areas, not much in the first stop so we kept moving. I was in touch with some other captains who had found a few tarpon but not a lot of action out of them yet. I was almost going to run there but I decided to look in another area where I found some fish last week. Boy did we get in them good there were a lot of fish around! We fished the last couple hours of falling tide and we landed 4 tarpon mostly in the 20 to 40 lb range and jumped off several others. They were tough to keep on the hook being smaller size, but great fun to catch! We also caught a few sharks. After the tide quit we moved around as a big shark dragged us for a ways. When we landed him, we were thick in a school of tarpon! They were just everywhere. We had to set our gear off the bow as we were current into the wind, but the tarpon didn’t care! We had another 8 or so tarpon bites and landed 4 more fish. It was just incredible! We also got a nice 30 lb bull redfish, unfortunately though we pulled the hook on him as I was leadering him into the landing net! We also got a big 200 lb lemon shark, and a few more blacktips as well. Our sister boat with Capt. Bill caught a handful of tarpon as well, and they got two lunker redfish too in the 15 to 30 lb range. Absolutely epic day for these guys they can’t wait to come back. Fishing should be very good this week we look to have similar conditions through the weekend – nice light wind under 5 mph. Bait will be the tough thing however we are getting better tides for our bait in the early morning window, so that may change tomorrow. I am booked tomorrow but just had a cancellation Thursday due to the hurricane about to hit the Carolinas. I never like to promise good fishing because things can change so quickly, but if you want to see what the epic fall tarpon bite is all about this is your week to come and I have plenty of openings after tomorrow through the weekend. This isn’t something we see every day and rarely do I have open days this short notice but being off season there aren’t many people down here so now is your chance! Give me a shout.  8 for 16

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