Got out with John and his son Andrew today. They are down from Wisconsin for the badgers/canes orange bowl game! They wanted to try and mix things up as they had read my recent reports and I’ve been doing that a lot lately. It’s nice some times to try different things especially when some things aren’t always red hot. We hit the mackerel grounds first and it was a little bumpy getting their with the 20mph north wind, but we made it OK. The spanish mackerel were chewing we must’ve caught over 2 dozen in little over an hour. We then hit the tarpon channels and the tarpon were definitely there! I knew though with the northerly wind they might not be real happy again. We had plenty of shark action and definitely had tarpon around us, but they didn’t want to play. Once the tide quit the wind also laid down a good bit. We decided to go look for tripletails on the buoys. That was productive we saw several of them and the boys each caught 1 and had several other shots but we had some pulled hooks and miscues, but fun doing it which is what counts. We then tried a snook spot back around the mainland and didn’t get any snook, but we did get a very nice 6 or 7 lb redfish for Andrew! The wind now kicked back more to the east and picked up a little bit again. We steamed back to the tarpon grounds to try that again with the tide falling now. Didn’t see quite as many fish but we did see a few and anchored up in that area. Unfortunately though no bites again but we did get more sharks, and Andrew got a big 90-100 lb black tip which really put on a show! All in all another great day though with good variety and plenty of action. Back at it tomorrow I’ll likely do a similar game plan as it’s been working for me. Wind is suppose to be lighter at 10 mph, and tomorrow night we will be getting back down into the mid 60s so the tarpon thing will likely be over for a while after tomorrow. Then it’ll get slightly colder each night for the next several nights through the weekend. Should be good for our drum/red/snook fishing in the ‘glades and I’m sure the mackerels won’t mind either.
Capt. Rick Stanczyk
Instagram: @richardstanczyk
Facebook: Islamorada Tarpon Fishing
