Capt. Rick Stanczyk's Islamorada Tarpon Fishing

Got out with Christian and his dad Jim today over from Louisiana.  We had a full day scheduled but it was blowing 25 knots out of the south… very snotty so I said a half day would be best just sticking close by.  Most boats ended up cancelling today, so they agreed and want to get out so we went for it.  Ended up hooking a big 110 lb or so tarpon within the first 15 minutes!  Christian battled him well and caught him quickly within 20 minutes or so.  Got some good pictures and released her to fight another day.  After the the sharks moved in a little… some little blacktips, bonnetheads, and did get a nice 50 lb bull shark.  We moved a few times and didn’t have any more tarpon action.  I was limited on bait but we caught a dozen more mullet which was good.  We tried a couple more spots, the last one we saw a few tarpon roll and the tide had started to fall so I thought we might get another shot.  But unfortunately no we gave it a good 30 minutes and stayed a little longer since I knew they wanted to be out for the day, but it didn’t happen again for us.  Anyways the wind was still cranking and rain storms were moving through so time to go.  Glad to get one on a day like today!  Back at it tomorrow, the winds are suppose to die down to 10-15 through the weekend which will be much nicer.  Hopefully the tarpon get happier too!  1 for 1

Capt. Rick Stanczyk

Got out with Sarah and Barry again today for our final trip.  A couple days ago we absolutely smashed it with multiple tarpon and a bunch of snook and few redfish.  Today though conditions changed and it was blowing 25 mph out of the south.  I knew fishing would be difficult with the conditions, as yesterday it wasn’t quite as windy but we struggled for a single bite.  We left a little earlier in the dark and hit one of the local areas.  After 45 minutes or so barry hooked into a nice 70 lb fish.  We were marking several on the machine too before that.  We made fairly short work of the fish and headed back.  Things seemed to quiet down, so I moved further down the channel, and didn’t see much but after 20 minutes, Sarah got into a nice fish.  Not sure how big but it was dumping line, so I’d say easily a 100+ lber.  Unfortunately as we were chasing her, Sarah had tightened the drag a little too tight and the wind-on leader just snapped!  Strange because that is 60 lb test and it popped way high up on it, so I’m pretty sure it wasn’t a part of the line that would’ve had much weakness to it…  Anyways this is a good lesson and could happen to anyone, as logically thinking you may want to tighten the drag to slow a fish down from running so much.  However with tarpon… never tighten the drag real tight when a big fish is dumping line, unless you are about to run out of line.  You’ll never stop a big tarpon with drag alone, and all that will happen is you’ll have too much pressure on the line and it’ll break at whatever point is weakest (usually at the knots, though in this case just the line itself snapped), or the fish will jump and possibly throw the hook (the more drag/pressure on the line, the greater chance a hook will be thrown when a fish jumps, especially if you are slow to bow to them).  And with big fish that can move erratically and pull hard, sometimes you don’t realize you have a weak spot until it does snap.  You only want to tighten the drag down hard when you have the fish mostly subdued and he is no longer making long, hard runs or going crazy jumping… basically when he is already ‘caught’ and you are just trying to subdue for a picture.  Anyhow at least we had caught the other fish, and both Sarah and Barry had landed multiple tarpon on our other trip, so no big deal.  After that unfortunately the bite was pretty much over with, we didn’t see much more for tarpon though in the last stop we made we did see a fish roll but didn’t get a bite out of it.  Scheduled for a full day tomorrow but we may cut it short and try to do what we did today.  1 for 2

Capt. Rick Stanczyk

Got out with return customer Joe and his buddy Tim this morning for a tarpon charter.  We had bait from the other day and only fished a half day so we stayed local.  We found some fish early on with the last trickle of incoming tide before sunrise.  We got a bite within 10 minutes, and Joe caught a nice 75 lb fish!  After that I was hoping we’d get one more shot before the tide quit, but alas it was not to be.  We ran out to the oceanside to catch the start of the falling tide, it was pretty windy out of the south but not too crazy.  We didn’t see any fish rolling, but did see a couple jumpers so there was a handful around.  But we didn’t get any bites after a couple more moves.  We went down to the bigger bridges to try, saw a handful of fish rolling around the bridge.  We saw one boat catch one and moved down nearer to that area after fishing a little bit.  We caught a sting ray and never had another tarpon bite unfortunately.  Anyways glad to have gotten one.  I normally recommend doing 3/4 or full days to get into the backcountry this time of year, though with the wind blowing and rainstorms around today (and since we already had bait) sometimes staying local makes more sense.  Though often the bite is early so better make those count like we did today!  1 for 1

Capt. Rick Stanczyk