March 2015

3/25/15 Tarpon fishing stays hot

Lots of tarpon again in the backcountry.  Fished our bait from the last few days.  We hooked up right away a nice 35 lb fish we caught quickly.  After that sharks moved in we caught several and moved out of the channel.  Saw a fish free jump and set up near that, saw a few roll and soon enough we were hooked up again.  A big moose again of 120 lbs or so.  We fought him for an hour or so, got him on the leader but he wouldn’t cooperate for a boatside picture and we broke him off.  After that we had one more tarpon go after a bait as I was reeling it in.  And then it was kind of over with, everything stopped and it was around 11:00.  We went out in the gulf and caught a nice 18-20 lb permit!  Great day!  2 for 2.

Capt. Rick Stanczyk

32515tarpon

3/24/15 Big tarpon in the everglades of South Florida

Switched gears today we ran back into the everglades to tarpon fish.  The spring tarpon migration is in full effect back there, tons of fish were out in the gulf.  The ‘red weed’ we often deal with was not too terrible, at least for a couple hours of fishing.  We caught 2 for 2 big tarpon in one of the channels, both monster fish of 120-130 lbs.  They were battlers we had to pull on them each for 45 minutes to an hour.  So that ate up a lot of time.  After the 2nd one we had to move because at that point the weed got really bad.   However we just went further out in the gulf and there were plenty of fish out there and the weed wasn’t too bad I guess it is really getting filtered through the channels.  We caught 1 more big tarpon of 110 lbs, and a large blacktip shark.  So pretty good morning we then went and caught a few permit off a gulf wreck, fabulous day!  3 for 3

Capt. Rick Stanczyk

3/23/15 Channel 2 tarpon fishing Islamorada

Fishing the channel 2 bridge was still productive today.  We had a little west wind today not very hard though it picked up a little in the afternoon.  The fish didn’t seem to mind we had a few cheap shots right away and eventually hooked and landed a nice 80 lber.  I had him on the leader and he took off and we got tip wrapped and lost him before we could get a good picture.  By the time we got back tide was slacked and we adjusted once it started coming in.  Soon we hooked another 60 lb and he drug us quite a ways and never jumped.  We got him to the boat multiple times and eventually he came unbuttoned.  No good boatside pictures but two fish to the boat.  After that we tried some other stuff the patch reef fishing was very good we got 10 keeper hogfish plus a variety of other stuff.  2 for 3.

Capt. Rick Stanczyk

32315tarpon