Tom called me yesterday evening and wanted to get out today. I said no problem I had the day open and the conditions looked pretty favorable. He was down visiting from New York, and did a lot of stiper and bass fishing up there. He was hoping from some drum and snook. We got out early and made our way back into the everglades mainland areas. A couple boats were ahead of us on one of the spots that has held some snook. It’s been tough to get there though especially over the busy weekend. Anyways I knew both of the other captains and they were nice enough to try and let me slide in. We gave it 20 minutes or so, and while they were both catching some fish here and there we weren’t able to get a bite! Must’ve just been the angle we were coming in at, but thats funny some times we were literally casting at the same spot. I didn’t want to crowd them any more or be rude, so we trolling motored out of there and continued on. The next stop we had a ton of actoin with some nice sea trout! Not a spot we normally get a lot of trout but they were there today. We picked away at a few black drums too, nothing huge but got one here and there. Probably ended up with about 8 drums and 20 or so trout! We tried another area after that nearby without much luck. I gave Tom the option of trying other stuff, or going back where we had the drum and trout action. He was really hoping for a snook so we ran back towards where we had came from. No luck at the spot we tried first thing in the morning, so we hopped around in some other areas and worked them hard. After a couple spots we did find one nice snook but unfortunately he threw the hook on a jump! Dang! I gave it a little extra time, as we were only fishing a 3/4 day and wanted to try to get Tom his snook. But fate didn’t have that in store for us, we tried a couple other spots with no luck, but the last cast Tom did get a nice redfish off the last stop! At least that made it worthwhile. Anyways not too bad of a day, not a ton of the fish we were looking for, but a good handful and plenty for one guy. I thought with it getting so nice after being so cold today would’ve been the day that the fishing really ‘went off’ and they would’ve been biting everywhere. But not the case. They did get pounded pretty hard the last few days being the weekend, so maybe the fish just need a break. Anyways I may go fun fishing with the wife tomorrow, then nothing on the books until early next week! If you want to go give me a shout, conditions look decent suppose to stay cool but not too cold.
Capt. Rick Stanczyk
Instagram: @richardstanczyk
Facebook: Islamorada Tarpon Fishing
