Got out with John and his sons Nick and Shaun today for a 3/4 day of inshore fishing in Islamorada. November has been steady with good action. We decided to stay local as the boys wanted more action and the backcountry right now has been a little more hit and miss, especially if you are only doing a 3/4 day as opposed to a full day. They also wanted some tablefare, and the islamorada patch reefs have been good for that! We found a good amount of snappers on our first stop. Even got a few lane snappers which was a welcome surprise! We had hits on our live bait pilchards as well as shrimp. We got some keeper mangroves, one keeper yellowtail, and then some more throwbacks. Also some throwback mutton snappers. We got a small grouper too which was cool, and everyone got to catch some small blacktip sharks! The sharks got keyed in on our chum line, and they were loving the free lined pilchards and are a great fight on light tackle. Lots of fun for the kids especially. After that the winds started to kick up a little more so we tried some stuff close to shore. We got John a nice snook near the bridge, and had another one on though we lost it. The islamorada bridge snook fishing can be good this time of year but you have to have the bait, which we did! Next stop we found some good size mangrove snappers, and kept a couple more of them. No more snook however. We blanked on a few more snook stops, did find a few baby tarpon in one place but they didn’t respond to our offerings. The last stop we found a big old school of jack crevelle going crazy on some baitfish! We caught several of them and it was entertaining watching the school come up and go crazy on the baits they were chasing. After that the boys had enough and we came in a little early. Fun day out there and nice to get some variety! I’m out of town now for a few days but coming back Friday evening. If anybody wants to go fishing this coming weekend I still have availability. Looks like we will be getting a nice cool down into the 60s… that could be excellent for our backcountry fishery with drum, snook, sheepshead, etc… Give me a shout!
Capt. Rick Stanczyk
Instagram: @richardstanczyk
Facebook: Islamorada Tarpon Fishing
