Well we’ve had our first handful of ‘cool fronts’ here one right before Thanksgiving, and another one just recently after it. I say cool front as it only dropped down into the low 60s and not a ton of wind – but that’s a good recipe for fishing as with the lighter winds it doesn’t churn up the backcountry waters too much and the cooler temps often bring down some of the winter time species redfish, drum, snook, and more. I had some epic fishing recently with my dad and two sets of customers. Some very big snook showed up with pops as well as a few big redfish and had a large cobia get eaten by a shark – that was all a few days before Thanksgiving. I was then out of town for a week but just fished the last two days after getting back and as mentioned another mild front brought water temps back down into the high 60 degree range. A good number of decent size black drum showed up, as well as a few more ‘bull’ redfish in the 20-30 lb range! Also got a tarpon for the SLAM today as well. Some big snook as well. Just awesome to see we played with the ‘big boys’ all day on both trips, and boated close to a dozen yesterday and well over a dozen today. Always nice when you can just focus on big trophy fish all day though definitely not an every day occurrence so don’t always expect that! But the next few months when its colder and calm weather it’s definitely possible and a lot of days we at least get a shot or two at bigger trophy fish like this while spend the rest of the day on the numbers of smaller fish.
Capt. Rick Stanczyk
Instagram: @richardstanczyk
Facebook: Islamorada Tarpon Fishing
YouTube: Bud n’ Mary’s Marina
