Great day with Trent and Shannon down from NY. They got stuck in bad weather we were suppose to fish yesterday, but luckily I had today scheduled off for maintenance and I was able to get Caribee Boat Sales and Marina to do my service/warranty work Thursday afternoon. They do a great job looking after the guides with Yamahas. So we went today and it was a little better weather wise anyhow. Winds were slightly less though still a little breezy. We found a bunch of bait early on which we got a few throws on and loaded the wells. Tarpon was on Trents list, and I told him we’d been catching a few but we’ve had to put a little time in as they weren’t pulling us out of the boat quite yet with the chillier water. But things have warmed up each day, and today I think the water was close to 80 degrees back there. Anyways we didn’t see a lot of tarpon at first, but I did think we were in a few of them. We set up and within 10 minutes had a big shark on, and then about 5 minutes later, Trent had a nice tarpon on! We landed her, about a 60 lber. Got a few good jump shots and had the fish to hand on the leader, but she shook loose before we could set up for a boatside picture. After that, we decided getting one right off the bat was good so we went after some other stuff which I felt was a good move. We had to work at it, but as the tide dropped low the fishing got better and better. We got into quite a few redfish, and about a half dozen or so snook. Also Trent caught another small tarpon, and we had a couple other bites out of them. Great fishing! Once the tide came up, we ran out towards the gulf as the wind had laid down a little more. We found a few tripletails and caught several of them. We found a pack of tarpon offshore while doing that. We set up and caught a shark, and then made a move and soon Trent was hooked up to his 3rd tarpon of the day – a big 130 lber! We fought her and same thing got the fish to hand, but she made one big run and got under the boat with the big swells and popped off the leader before we could get pics. Oh well, again we got some good jump shots. Anyhow, fantastic fishing we seemed to just do everything right today and made it look easy, which it definitely wasn’t an easy conditions today. But you never know unless you go!
Capt. Rick Stanczyk
Instagram: @richardstanczyk
Facebook: Islamorada Tarpon Fishing
