Capt. Rick Stanczyk's Islamorada Tarpon Fishing

Been busy i had 4 days with the Italian crew going mostly after tarpon here in Islamorada.  We had a mix of weather with a couple of days with some blustery south/southwesterly winds and then some cooler ‘winter like’ northeasterlies that are more typical of the fall conditions.  Overall there has been a decent amount of tarpon around and tons of bait.  We often get that this time of year in october as fall bait starts showing up and pushing south.  Big schools of tarpon often come with them and we get a little window before winter time of some good fishing for them.  We fished four days and had action every day hooking multiple tarpon.  We had three fish out of four on one day where it was blowing good out of the south which isn’t always our favorite wind direction.  On a calmer day we had 4 fish and hooked a few others we missed.  Today we had a good northeasterly blow and we had 4 shots at fish but we only landed one.  The other day we spent going after snook and other species which was fair fishing.  We should continue to have some opportunities as long as it stays warm enough which I think it will.  This can go on well into November and sometimes even December depending on the year.  If the tarpon slow down though there is usually good options with snook, redfish, and other specimens back there.

Got out for a few days of tarpon fishing last week with Dody and Dan. They booked me for 3 days and fortunately were here for a week so we were able to slide days around according to the weather. We had some terrible rain and wind mid-week on Wednesday and Thursday. But we fished Monday on the 28th and had a gorgeous day that day. It was slick calm and we found lots of tarpon around. Dody started the day with a large snook off a tarpon bait which was a nice surprise. We then caught a couple tarpon and jumped a couple others all in that same spot which was a fun way to start. Eventually that shut off and we moved further offshore and found another group of happy tarpon and caught 3 more I think and jumped a couple others. So quite an awesome day getting 5 tarpon in the 20 to 50 lb range. We fished Tuesday the next day too as it looked like the wind would be favorable early and the weather was spotty but we hoped it would give us a window to get out which it did. We got a little rain but nothing too bad. Dan got a big bull shark to start the day. We didn’t do quite as well but we did find a good group of tarpon again though they weren’t quite as happy as the day before. We worked at it and got a few bites out of the tarpon but they were being good at jumping off the hook. Dody got one eventually though. Then we also got a nice lemon shark and a goliath grouper. I think one other tarpon bite we missed so just landed one on the day but we hooked 4 or 5 I think. Then we had a couple days off that were pretty nasty as mentioned. But we got out again Friday and it wasn’t too bad. The wind was calmer in the backcountry which was nice. We found tarpon early on and jumped a few fish right away. Eventually we got one on that stayed hooked and landed it. Checked a few other areas for tarpon as it dried up on us but we didn’t see too much. Came back to where we started and we did jump off one more tarpon there. Then on the way back we saw several tarpon busting on some bait and putting on a show. Sure enough we pulled in and put some baits out and we hooked one in about 10 minutes. Nice 50 lb fish for Dody again. So not too bad with another couple tarpon for us.

So we’ve got a decent tarpon bite going on and should stay pretty good through October. I think it may even get a little better as we continue to get fall pushes of bait and that may last well into November – we’ll see! But if you want to catch tarpon it’s not a bad time to give it a try now!

Capt. Rick Stanczyk
Instagram: @richardstanczyk
Facebook: Islamorada Tarpon Fishing
YouTube: Bud n’ Mary’s Marina