Got out with Bob and Bobby for the day today. Tarpon was on the list of fish but they didn’t want to devote the day solely to that if it wasn’t happening. We caught some pilchards on the way out and a few mullet in the backcountry so we had ammo for everything. Found some snook first thing where we had got them yesterday, good little bite we caught about half a dozen and a nice redfish. Bobby also hooked a nice 20 lb tarpon we fought for a minute but unfortunately we threw the hook. After that we moved around a bit, tried to get the tarpon going on our pilchards as we saw some rolling but no luck. We got one more snook after moving a few times. After that we tried some other spots with our light tackle, not much luck. Tried for tarpon off shore a bit, didn’t see any free jumpers or signs of life, we marked a couple things on sonar that really seemed like tarpon. But no bites for us there we gave it a good 40 minutes. After that we found some more little tarpon in a creek, bobby hooked another one but he got us wrapped around some structure and went through the leader. After that we made a run and tried another area. Saw a handful of larger tarpon crashing baits, but not like you expect to see this time of year… We lost one snook out there, and didn’t get any tarpon action though we had a couple sharks we pulled on. Tried several spots, nothing much happening… We ran back towards home and tried one more creek where there were some tarpon yesterday in the morning. We saw a few but they didn’t want to play, but the guys each got one more snook a piece. We then tried a channel on the way home for the last 30 minutes, got a nice big blacktip shark, and that was about all she wrote. Glad we decided to mix it up a bit I think it would’ve been a long day trying for tarpon only. Different year this year I’m sure the storm has something to do with that, but not seeing the crazy tarpon action we had last october, but it could still come. That’s the thing about the fall run it’s not a consistent thing year to year. 0 for 2
Capt. Rick Stanczyk
Instagram: @richardstanczyk
Facebook: Islamorada Tarpon Fishing
