1/28/19 – Day 2 with Steve and Jim! It was very cold, cloudy, and windy today but no rain. The boys wanted to stay and try to get some meat close to home. I was fine with avoiding the long run in the backcountry for a day! We hit the patches and it was very good, lots of porgies and a variety of snappers and other things. After a couple hours we went a bit more inshore to get out of the wind. We found a big school of redfish in a couple different places! This is unusual to see in Islamorada itself as these fish are usually further back in the everglades/gulf waters. We caught probably close to 40 in the two spots, and some nice size ones too up to a little over 20 inches. Very cool! After that we did go back around a few islands to get our limit of mangrove snapper. Had to look around a bit for some larger ones but we found them, and a few more redfish mixed in as well here too! All in all a great day for the boys and we didn’t have to go more than 10 miles from home. Back at it today it’s gonna be colder, might be a week for some large backcountry fish if conditions are right which it might be!
1/29/19 – Great day 2 with Jim and Gwen! We had nice conditions fairly calm and cold. Was hoping to find some stacked up snooks, but wasn’t the day for it. Jim did get a nice one to start however. We moved around and got on a good redfish and black drum bite after that. Also a few trout and sheepshead too. Gwen even caught a small tarpon but we didn’t get it up for pictures as it broke off while leadering it into the net. After that we checked some areas out in the gulf as it was flat calm now. Not too much on the wrecks we checked, but did get into a big school of bluefish for some action! We ran back inshore and got a few nice size black drum, a good size redfish for Gwen, and Jim got a very nice size snook too! Jim also hooked a tarpon that unfortunately got away. But overall just an awesome day with two of my favorite customers who have been fishing me a long time now! Back at it tomorrow looks like it will be nice and calm again hopefully some good conditions for us!
Capt. Rick Stanczyk
Instagram: @richardstanczyk
Facebook: Islamorada Tarpon Fishing
