Capt. Rick Stanczyk's Islamorada Tarpon Fishing

Got out yesterday for a full day with my dad and a couple friends of his, Steve and Dana.  We mixed it up a bit, found some snook and redfish early on with the last trickle of incoming tide.  We did find some baby tarpon and my dad caught a nice juvenile we got to the boat but he jumped off before I could get him in the net, but had him on the leader for a while.  After that we caught a big old snook for Steve about a 17 lber, and nice cobia for Dana.  Not a whole lot doing after that though the water was super muddy as we had a hard west wind the day before.

I haven’t been fishing a whole lot else this week aside from a short half day several days ago.  The Contender was in the shop but I just got it back today so she’s ready for action.  But there have been a good number of tarpon out in the backcountry it appears.  Most my anglers have preferred mixing it up a bit though so I just haven’t really been concentrating on them.  But I have a lot of trips coming up after the weekend, so will probably spend a little time after the silver kings.  October is right around the corner, and that is probably the last good tarpon month we may have.  The conditions look ripe for a good fall bait run, in fact it seems to be starting a little bit already.  My favorite time of year to fish!  1 for 1

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

Snooks, reds, juvenile Goliath grouper, and juvenile tarpon for the slam! Fun fishing with Jacoby and Kellie. Blustery with a 20 mph wind today, but the fish didn’t mind too much. A few areas that had been good were mudded out, but we worked around and picked fish just about everywhere we stopped. No great numbers but steady action, we ended up well into double digits on snook and a strong handful of reds. At least it wasn’t blistering hot! Definetly a little bit of a bait run going on so fishing should stay pretty good I think. Fall is here, my favorite time of year to fish.  1 for 1

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

Got out for some fun fishing with my dad and our friend/marina worker Vic.  We were after snook for the most part and had some epic fishing for them, landing a bunch including a couple jumbos in the 36-37 inch range.  But we had a lot of tarpon busting around us too and we managed to cast and get one on a pinfish.  Dad did the job on a nice little 25 lber.  There were definitely some larger fish in the mix too and I think if you were really targetting them a bit more you would’ve had some activity.  September and October can be very good fishing, it almost felt to me like we were getting a touch of fall today as the air was a hair cooler and seemed to be a good amount of bait around back there.  Next week looks like a lot of northeast wind and I think with the hurricane last week and this northeast breeze, that may get the fall bait run started early for a bit.  1 for 2

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