4/6/17 April Fishing in Islamorada

April is here and that usually means the start of ‘prime time’ tarpon season!  Fish have definitely shown up around many of the local bridges and channels.  However it has not been ‘red hot’ fishing all the time.  Being there at the right time in the right place seems to be key, and often there are little windows where they seem to be biting well so you hope to catch a fish during those times.  The last couple days we had pretty good fishing though we only ended up landing one tarpon.  Yesterday we probably had about eight bites on the falling tide in the late morning around the bridges.  But our baits were big and it was tough to get the hook in the tarpon but we finally did!  The day before we had jumped a couple tarpon off in the morning, and spent the rest of the day in the backcountry.  The backcountry fishing had been a little tough the last few days as we’ve had a stiff south breeze the last three days or so, and it really mudded up the backcountry and was even hard getting the sharks to bite whilst trying for tarpon.  We did catch some nice mangrove snappers back there on cut bait, and had plenty of action with trout too.  Speaking of trout several days ago we caught a nice 22 incher which was a great catch.  The day after that while it was still calm (before the south wind started cranking) we had a banner day with tarpon.  We ended up catching 6 with Jake and John Hess, it was just one of those perfect days.  So anyways as you can see the fishing has been up and down.  Right now we are having a late cold front smack us again so that will likely slow the tarpon bite down for a few days… It’s suppose to get down in the mid to low 60s so it’ll be about a 15 degree drop, hopefully it’ll warm right back up though.  I’m fairly booked up through the end of June but if you are looking to get out this summer it’s still a great time for tarpon and we usually have pretty good snook fishing too on our full day trips, drop me a line and we’ll get it set up!

Capt. Rick Stanczyk