Got out with Mike today down from ND for a 3/4 day of fishing. He didn’t have any specific species in mind for targeting. I told him it had been a little tough out back the last few days from what I’d heard, and since we just had a 3/4 day I knew that wouldn’t leave us a lot of time to switch gears once we made the hour+ trek back there if things didn’t work out well. So we decided to stay close and fish the patches and local areas. We spent a good hour or so looking for live bait but didn’t have much luck with that, only found one school of baby pilchards which were hardly worth throwing on, but I did get a few of them. Bait has not been consistent as of late. Luckily the live shrimp have been good size. November patch reef fishing is usually a good bet as the water temperatures dip down and the shallow reefs become alive. We had good action in a couple spots with various types of snappers. We got some nice mangrove snappers for dinner and Mike planned on a little hook and cook at lazy days. We also got some juvenile muttons, yellowtails, and a few grunts. One spot had a good school of yellow bar jacks too which were fun they pull a good bit! After that we tried a bay spot for some mackerel, but we had a weak tide going into the wind and not much happened there at all. We decided to finish up by trying some stake up bonefishing, which I don’t really do a whole lot of. We tried a couple different flats on the ocean side, but no bonefish bites. We did get a small bonnethead shark and a couple rays though. Anyways I’m not booked tomorrow, then have sunday and monday on the books, and going out of town tuesday for thanksgiving. If you want to go tomorrow give me a shout, or I have some days available after thanksgiving starting next Saturday! Hopefully we will get a little blast of cold weather sometime in the next week to spark up the winter time fishing.
Capt. Rick Stanczyk
Instagram: @richardstanczyk
Facebook: Islamorada Tarpon Fishing
