tarpon

11/12/2023 November Tarpon still around!

Well it’s mid November and we’ve had our first touch of winter with a couple of cold fronts in the last few weeks.  Nothing major but it did drop into the high 60s for a few days at times and has since warmed up.  November typically is when I start to tell people tarpon get to be much more hit & miss, as the colder weather and water temperatures usually lead to less numbers and activity out of tarpon.  Though we have plenty of other productive fishing options.  However today the water temps were back up to about 80 degrees which is plenty warm for the silver king.  We weren’t really fishing for tarpon though we found them in 4 different areas of the backcountry which is pretty good numbers to see for this time of year.  We ended up catching a nice 40 lber on a pinfish which put up a great battle.  I think if we would’ve had our mullet and put time in we could’ve caught several tarpon today.  Anyways we have another weak front coming in a few days mid week though the temperatures aren’t suppose to really drop at all though it’ll be blowing hard for a couple days and might rain some.  But I think once the wind lets up tarpon could definitely be a possibility.  I will say there are still plenty of mullet around so bait is available.  If you are interested in tarpon fishing let me know I’m happy to give you my honest assessment if it’s worthwhile or not but for the time being I would say yes.  I’m also starting to book 2024 dates for myself personally as well as my team of captains.  If you want to get on the calender for prime dates let me know!

Capt. Rick Stanczyk
Instagram: @richardstanczyk
Facebook: Islamorada Tarpon Fishing
YouTube: Bud n’ Mary’s Marina

10/10/23 October Tarpon Update

Well I had a bit of a break here for the first week of October.  Took my dad fishing once and we caught a few nice snook.  But today I had Mr. Bill who manages the marina for our family and his son Wayne, along with my dad too.  We snook fished most of the day but brought the tarpon gear in case the opportunity presented it self.  Didn’t see any massive schools of tarpon throughout the day or much to really get excited about.  But there was plenty of bait around, and random crashes on them in lots of the usual fishing haunts.  My personal take is things are just kind of ‘spread out’ right now – there are tarpon around but really kind of spread thin all over.  We ended up just kind of looking around slowly with our sonar along some shoreline and eventually marked one.  Set up and within 5 minutes had a big shark on and a few minutes later hooked a nice 75 lb tarpon we caught.  Capt. Stephen had the boat yesterday and they hooked several small tarpon while snook fishing, and ended up catching a couple later in the day too.  So definitely not a bad time to try and catch tarpon right now and I think once we get a little more cool weather up north which we’re suppose to in a few days, it may push some larger schools of fish our way and we may have a few weeks of really good tarpon fishing.

Right now next week is really busy we have trips booked every day with two boats.  Though myself or Capt. Stephen can likely squeeze an extra trip in now since we have two contender bays available.  So if you want to get out after the silver king, give me a shout.  I’ll shoot ya straight with regards to what I think our chances our but overall it seems decently good now and bait is fairly easy which is one of the biggest factors.

Capt. Rick Stanczyk
Instagram: @richardstanczyk
Facebook: Islamorada Tarpon Fishing
YouTube: Bud n’ Mary’s Marina