Capt. Rick Stanczyk's Islamorada Tarpon Fishing

Got out with Duane, Diana, and their grandson Gilly today for a full day.  It was flat calm and gorgeous out, very spring-like conditions as things warmed up considerably from a week ago.  But the water was still in the low to mid 70s.  Tarpon often show up on days like this seemingly from nowhere.  I mentioned it to the crew and we figured we may give it a shot at some point during the day.  We caught plenty of mackerels in the morning and a few tripletails running the buoy lines in the gulf.  We checked one area for tarpon but didn’t see any signs of them.  When its slick calm, usually you can see them as they disturb the surface easily and can’t hide so easily.  We ran and checked another channel and as soon as I stopped the boat I started marking fish on the sonar!  After 10 minutes or so we started seeing them roll.  Not a giant school but probably 3 dozen or so.  We caught a few big blacktip sharks, but kept at it and eventually hooked a nice 100 lb tarpon!  It was a good fight and we landed him in about 25 minutes.  Unfortunately we didn’t get any good boatside pictures as we pulled the hook while he was on the leader, but a good technical catch anyhow as we had him on the leader boatside.  After that the tarpon kind of dissapated there were still a few around, but we didn’t get any more bites.  Saw a couple more boats show up and they didn’t have much luck but I know after we left one of them caught one too.  We did get 3 sawfish though which was really cool!  All in all a great day I think the tarpon will likely stick around until it gets cold or really windy again, but maybe through the weekend at least!  1 for 1

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

Well I had Pam and Lars out again for day two with me in the everglades backcountry.  Fishing was very good again not quite as red hot as yesterday but still very good.  Several big snook in the 8 to 12 lb range, some nice redfish and black drum, some smaller snook, some big sea trout, and Lars got another tarpon!  Didn’t see as many tarpon rolling around and really didn’t expect it two days in a row.  But it happened and we were happy!  Unfortunately we didn’t get any pictures as he broke through the leader while i was trying to net him, but had the leader in hand for an official catch.  Woohoo!  1 for 1

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

Got out with Pam and Lars today for a full day of backcountry fishing in Islamorada.  We weren’t really planning on tarpon as it was COLD… water temperatures were in the low 60s and a major front had come in a few days ago.  I did not expect tarpon action at all.  But we were planning on crushing the snooks, reds, and drums (which we did!).  However some tarpon did start rolling in the area and I had the anglers cast in that direction and slowly work their shrimp and let it drop in front of them.  They each ended up catching one – wow what a surprise!  Was great too because that completed a backcountry SLAM of snook, redfish, and tarpon for both anglers.  You never know what will happen on an islamorada fishing charter in December or any month of the year for that matter!  Things will slowly warm up the next few days and don’t know when the next cold front will be, but I expect we will get some more in the next month or two.  Tarpon fishing is usually spotty through January but if conditions get right, it can definitely be possible.  Or even if they aren’t right you may get lucky like we did today!  2 for 2

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