5/3/16 + 5/4/16 May Tarpon Fishing Report Islamorada

5/3/16 – I got out this evening with Craig and his buddy Jonesy last night.  They were after some tarpon and hadn’t had any luck yet, visiting from Bermuda.  I fished later in the evening from 6:30 to 10:00 and we had the incoming tide all night with a light westerly pre-frontal wind.  Fishing was pretty good we had ran down the road near channel 2 and made a big drift though a friend of mine had called saying they were biting in one of the channels. We had done well there the previous night so we raced back up there.  We fished with some live mullets at first though they weren’t super lively and when we were checking our baits after about 20 minutes, we got a bite on the 3rd rod a live crab we had out there.  We caught the fish and then set up to drift again and soon hooked a second tarpon we landed.  After that we had bites on the next two drifts though we missed them both and then things slowed down a bit as the tide slowed.  Anyways was glad to have gotten the guys each a fish.  2 for 4

5/4/16 – We fished all day today I caught plenty of fresh mullet early.  We started in the local channel where we had caught fish the last couple trips and there were some tarpon around.  We had a couple cheap shots, nice fish chasing the baits, but didn’t eat.  After that things slowed down and my customers said they’d love to catch a tarpon but didn’t want to spend all day trying for one fish necessarily, they wanted action.  So I decided to run into the backcountry where we would at least have some shark action and still a shot at a tarpon.  We didn’t get any tarpon bites but plenty of blacktips kept us busy.  We tried a few different areas and then tried near home again for the last hour but just had a couple sting rays that put up a good fight.  I did hear a few fish bit around town later in the morning though it’s tough to stay around for that on a full day trip especially when customers want to make sure they catch something.  Anyways today was prefrontal blowing hard out of the southwest and a front is hitting us no, temperatures are dropping to 70, not that I think the tarpon fishing can get much harder than it is!  0 for 0

Capt. Rick Stanczyk

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