Tried for tarpon a bit today with Adam and his dad Jim. Conditions were pretty favorable early with a light wind, though south not my favorite direction. We ran over a herd of mullet first thing and were able to catch a bunch. I had high hopes with a bunch of bait! We checked some channels, and found a few tarpon though not a ton. We had a shark on first, and then Adam jumped a nice tarpon while we fought that! Unfortunately that was the last tarpon action we had. We fished until the tide quit and then caught a bunch of redfish while we waited for it to change. Then we tried a couple other areas where we saw tarpon in both, but just not in a good mood. The winds kicked up a little more and the water still on the chilly side. Just couldn’t get them going but we did catch quite a few sharks. We decided to bail on it and still had plenty of time to catch some tripletail and finish up the day with a few snook. 0 for 1
The tarpon fishing is just hit or miss right now, and again there are so many other good options it’s hard sometimes to dedicate the day to it… so unless I have clients who really want to go all in, we are usually just giving it an hour or so shot unless it looks like it’ll be really good. We do have another cold front tomorrow night, not getting super cold just down to low 60s, but won’t help the tarpon fishing any. Though it should be a good thing for later in the season, as sometimes when things get started super early we have a tougher May and June. But we’ll see what happens back at it tomorrow.
Capt. Rick Stanczyk
Instagram: @richardstanczyk
Facebook: Islamorada Tarpon Fishing
