Great day with Mitch and Mary visiting from Oklahoma. It was a chilly morning as temperatures dropped slightly and a little windy, but definitely gets worse! Once we got into the backcountry though it was nice just a little cold. Fishing was good we got into a great drum and sheepshead bite early! Mary got a lunker drum 30ish lbs I’d say, her biggest fish ever! We got a bunch of smaller ones too but decent size, some snook, redfish, and a bunch of nice size sheepshead too. I just got pics of the first one but we caught quite a few that were bigger probably a dozen in all. After an hour or so things slowed down. We found a few more snook and redfish in a other spot. Mitch had a nice snook on that threw the hook unfortunately. Later we hit another area near the tide change. More redfish here and some nice size trout! Also another snook. After that we hit a spot that was good yesterday but not much today, though did get a trout there. Lastly things got nice and the wind laid down, we gave the monster snook hole a try again. Nothing but catfish for a little bit, but then we got a nice black drum and a few more mediums sized ones. Finally a huge thump and screaming drag! I passed Mitch the rod and the fish made a big run then went under the boat. Unfortunately he made a few tricky moves and was a little hard to keep up with and we got tangled around the underneath of the boat. The one that got away! Oh well it happens and those are the ones that keep you coming back. But all in all another fantastic day. Just got booked for tomorrow and I’m pretty busy through the next 10 days or so. Looks like big weather/cold front coming Sunday, should cool off but when the dust settles and smoke clears, I’ll expect some big fishing! I do have Friday open this week if anyone wants to go, conditions look pretty good. After that I don’t have anything available until the 30th or so.
Capt. Rick Stanczyk
Instagram: @richardstanczyk
Facebook: Islamorada Tarpon Fishing
