Well we are in the clear from Hurricane Dorian thankfully. I had a busy week on the books starting today, however unfortunately I’ve lost 4 trips over it due to the possibility of this dang storm… Today was the first day, and it was absolutely beautiful and slick calm. So luckily my dad was up for going with our friend Ron Modra and Debra who works at Bud n marys. We headed out early and first stop we found a bunch of tarpon rolling, we casted to them and jumped one and that was about the only good shot we got. Next we got a nice cobia. Was hoping we’d find some more but nothing else came up. Second stop we got a good size trout. Then we decided to run further up the road and fish some areas that I’ve been going with the new boat that are far away. It was loaded with smaller snook and redfish, though we did get one decent size snook in there too. After that it stayed calm so we headed out into the gulf. This is where we started to see some crazy things… Two big schools of permit, probably 100 fish in each! Though they weren’t too happy we chased them casting crabs, shrimp, and even artificials… but they just did not want to eat. We had one crush a crab possibly, but that was it and the little jacks were eating the shrimps and artificials so quick you couldn’t even have a chance, they even ate a few of the crabs too. We kept moving and we found another school of things with some birds following them around. At first it looked like more jacks, but then all of a sudden we were surrounded by monster bull redfish! Again it was hard to get a bait to them as the jacks ate our shrimp and pinfish. But I quickly grabbed the biggest crab we had, and we hooked a nice 20 lb red that I caught. After that though we lost the school and it was about time to head in anyways as we were still a good ways from home. We did stop on one more wreck on the way home, and caught a nice little goliath grouper on light tackle which was cool. The west wind started to kick up a little on the way home but luckily we were going with it. Wow what a special day and just some unreal stuff that you don’t get to see all the time. Unfortunately we are going to get some bad west wind and possibly rain the next few days, so it may not be great for fishing. But by the weeks end it should be getting better. September and October are some of my favorite months of the year for fishing down here – you really get the place to yourself and when conditions are right, you may see some wild stuff like we saw today.
Capt. Rick Stanczyk
Instagram: @richardstanczyk
Facebook: Islamorada Tarpon Fishing
