Well what a day we were filming for our YouTube show again today. Had my dad and our friend Ron Modra, along with Ricky Walker from Scotland who is a film producer there. He shot the film for us today. We fished in the backcountry and it was pretty good. Seemed to be some fish just about everywhere we went. Lost a few good snook early to some sharks, and missed another in the net, they weren’t playing nice with us! We did get a few smaller ones and one decent one, plus some good redfish. Next stop some black drums and reds and one good snook. Then we got into a mess of smaller reds, snooks, and some nice trout. All in all good fishing and perfect for the filming. We tried some spots again for some big fish, again we had broke one off and lost another at the boat just frustrating one of those days. Finally last stop of the day we hooked something big right away. I thought it was a big redfish, as that’s what we’d caught there the last couple of days. My dad hooked up too so we had a double header. All of a sudden Rons took off, and I thought a shark had eaten it so we yelled Shark! My dad put the wood to his fish, and unfortunately it ended up breaking off but jumped one time and we could see it was a monster snook! Ron’s finally stopped running, and he started reeling it back in… I was expecting to just see the head of some big redfish, but sure enough it was a monstrous snook! We got it to the boat, and it came off the hook but luckily I got it’s head in the net and we landed it. A huge 40 inch once in a lifetime fish! Getting that one made up for all the rest we lost, and what a way to end our day. We did have one more bite on a pinfish that we missed, and that was it. Awesome day out there, always nice when you get a fish like that which we’ll forever remember. And the ones you lose make for good stories down the line.
Capt. Rick Stanczyk
Instagram: @richardstanczyk
Facebook: Islamorada Tarpon Fishing
