July 2018

Got out with John Page today who has been following me on Facebook for a while.  He wanted to catch some tarpon and booked the day a little while back.  We headed out early and I told him fishing had been pretty good as of late.  Summer time as I always say it’s my favorite time of year!  We got on the bait early to start and loaded the wells.  Always nice when that part is easy.  We checked a few spots for tarpon along the way but didn’t see much.  We did have a nice northerly breeze which was cool, but may have been keeping the tarpon from showing as much.  Anyways I decided to run where we had done well the last few days.  Caught the last trickle of incoming tide to start but we did eventually see a few fish roll.  Not much but when the tide started to fall the bite turned on.  We ended up getting five tarpon here plus a few sharks and other odds and ends!  John did well and listened precisely how I explained to hook and fight the tarpon, and he was rewarded with not missing a single fish all day.  I on the other hand did miss a couple of bites lol but mostly out of the rod holder.  After that slowed down we ran out originally to try some other stuff.  I decided to check a spot though in hopes of catching something cool like a cobia or big snook.  Low and behold there were some tarpon out here too!  We did get a big snook to start which was very cool.  Then we shuffled around and got in front of the tarpon.  Pretty much insantly we were on with a nice 75 lb tarpon for John, good size fish.  We battled him and then went back to where we were.  Eventually the tide turned and we had a few more bites.  We ended up getting four more tarpon here and like I said missed a couple others, including a would-be double header!  After that though the tarpon seemed to thin out for the last 30 minutes, but overall just phenomenal fishing!  It ended up being my best day of the season with 10 tarpon landed!  John had a banner day and can’t wait to come back next year.  Hopefully the fishing stays like this for a while longer.  August is just around the corner and it can still be very good no doubt, I have plenty of days open so if you wanna try your hand at it, give me a shout!  10 for 12

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

Got out for Day 2 with David and Dana.  We headed out early and caught some bait in the backcountry.  The bait wasn’t in the same spot as the last few days so had to look around a little, but found a good school of it a mile or so away.  We loaded up and then searched for tarpon.  I checked an area where a buddy of mine said yesterday he had seen a bunch of tarpon.  I was hoping there’d be some larger size fish there, but we looked around for 10 minutes and never saw a sign of them.  It was slick calm so they shoul’ve been easy to see.  I didn’t run all over the places but just checked where he had seen them, so they could’ve been further up one of those channel areas, but I didn’t want to invest too much time.  We ran back where we had found them yesterday.  Today there was still a load of fish there, mostly small to medium size tarpon.  We ended up doing pretty well and had five bites and landed all five fish, finishing up with a double header!  Also plenty of bluefish, jacks, and a few large catfish.  By 9:30 or so though the bite was over.  We checked another channel nearby and saw a few tarpon there too, but the by-catch was too strong to get through.  We wrapped it up at 10:30 and headed back on our 3/4 day.  Great day again hopefully it continues to stay this good, back at it tomorrow.  5 for 5

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

Got out with David and Dana today for a 3/4 day trip.  We headed out early and caught some bait out back.  Didn’t find the huge school of tarpon nearby that was there a couple days ago, and I had yesterday off, so they may have moved on.  We did see a handful rolling but not enough to keep me there.  We ran and tried another area.  Did see a few more fish here and no boats which was nice, there were a couple boats in the previous area early!  We set up and caught a few random things jacks and such, then David got a nice tarpon!  We released him and set back up but no more bites aside from some little junk fish.  We moved and hit another channel, plenty of tarpon here too.  We had to work at it a little but eventually jumped a nice tarpon again, then Dana got one!  Smaller fish too a nice 30 lber.  We had another one eat a bait while we were following that one too which was funny, he came off the hook though.  We set back up and had a few big shark bites, some larger bull sharks.  Tons of catfish and bluefish and jacks it was hard getting through the little stuff.  Eventually we moved and then set back up on some rolling fish and David caught one more tarpon.  Great way to finish up and good fishing overall.  Back at it tomorrow with these two hopefully it’s jut as good.  3 for 6

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