Got out for a day of fun fishing with my wife Elizabeth Baxter today. It was slick calm and there was a slight chance of rain, but most of it went by early in the morning. It stayed overcast all day and looked like a real ‘fishy’ day! The creeks I knew would be very buggy with no wind and a warming trend. We tried a few areas near the mouths of some creeks, and the bugs definitely were coming out but not too bad there in the open areas anyhow. Fishing was a little slow to start, we managed one nice black drum in the first stop and a trout. Nothing in the next stop. And then we worked a whole shoreline for about an hour and only got one other black drum there. It looked really good too I was surprised! After that we continued further back into the everglades up the southwestern coast of the mainland. We tried a few pieces of structure in the gulf, no luck there but did mark a few fish on my garmin bottom machine which got me excited but never had a bite. We tried a few other creeks up here since it was getting later in the day and figured the bugs wouldn’t be as bad. They were still around, but not the nasty noseeums these were small flies that didn’t really bother you too much so they were bearable. Anyhow we didn’t get anything in these two creeks in the first couple stops. We did find a few trout inside one at a different spot though. No snook, redfish, or drum though! We worked our way back towards the area we were fishing earlier, and got on a good spot that can produce when it is colder temperatures. Surprisingly nobody was there though as soon as we pulled up another boat was steaming to get over there but we were first luckily. The other day I fished here and we caught a bunch of trout and a handful of drums. Today the tide was down more and the conditions just looked more ‘right.’ We caught quite a few black drum here, 3 redfish, 1 snook, a sheepshead, and probably 10 trout or so. Really good fishing for sure! I was hoping we might get a big lunker black drum, but not to be today. Anyways we called it a day after that, I was glad we got to see the everglades on such a gorgeous day. My wife doesn’t get to go back there nearly as much as I do so just being there is good enough for her. But was definitely glad we got to finish up with a bunch of fish too! Just goes to show you some times you can work hard all day and not produce much, and then you get in the right spot at the right time, and can make your whole day of fish in under an hour sometimes. But some times that is tough when you are competing with other boats and such as most of them want to be in those same spots too!
Capt. Rick Stanczyk
Instagram: @richardstanczyk
Facebook: Islamorada Tarpon Fishing
