Capt. Rick Stanczyk's Islamorada Tarpon Fishing

Got booked for today and a few bookings during the upcoming week now.  All of a sudden I have a full week of fishing had to mark tuesday off so I can get a little break!  That’s a good thing though.  Today we fished out back for a 3/4 day.  We left out early and caught some bait on the way.  First stop bait was OK we got one decent throw and then a handful more.  Though stopped in another area since we were waiting on the tide anyhow and got a crushing throw to load the cooler.  We tried around flamingo where there had been a few tarpon as the tide started to fall.  Didn’t see much though we had some good shark activity with some big lemons and blacktips.  After that we ran out west and saw a few tarpon airing out.  Set up and soon we hooked a few big bottom fish and caught a lunker snook!  After that we hooked a nice 50 lb tarpon and caught him.  My angler Zeb was thrilled with his first poon.  We had a large goliath grouper rock us up too.  We tried to get his wife a tarpon after that and moved around a bit where I had seen some fish busting.  Soon she had one hooked up but unfortunately he came unbuttoned.  After that it was time to go home.  Will likely be giving it a go again tomorrow as I have some bait stocked away.  1 for 2

Capt. Rick Stanczyk

Tough day for us today we got out early and I had a little bait left over.  Was hoping to get some more on the way back.  I checked further to the west where there had been some in the afternoons, but we did not see much at all this morning.  So I ran off the beaches where we had good fishing a few days ago.  Today it was ghost town however we did not even have a shark bite.  Moved around 3 different times and fished it pretty hard.  When I was just about out of bait we saw a free jumping fish about a 100 yards out but didn’t have the bait to go try to fish there.  Anyways we spent a good amount of time after that looking for bait to no avail.  The falling tides have been very hard for bait, there was some mullet around but way up on the flat where I couldn’t get to them, and as soon as the boat got within 100 feet they were scattering.  We gave up on the tarpon and tried to catch some smaller stuff, but even those fish didn’t want to cooperate.  We caught a handful of snappers and then called it a day.  Can’t catch ’em every day!  0 for 0

Capt. Rick Stanczyk

Had Michael and Steven out again from yesterday.  Today they wanted to try for some snook so tarpon wasn’t really on the game plan.   But that didn’t stop us from catching one!  We were chumming some bait in one of the channels and saw some tarpon rolling along the edge nearby.  I had some bait leftover from yesterday and we put a couple out while we continued to chum and catch bait.  Soon Michael had a nice 50 lb fish hooked up!  Fishing lesson #1 – Always be prepared!   After that we had a good day catching the boys their first snook among several others, and some nice mangrove snappers for dinner!  1 for 1

Capt. Rick Stanczyk