Got out with a friend of my dads Arnold who had chartered me, and my dad came along with us. He’s been quite the lucky charm as of late. We had slick calm conditions, a perfect spring-like day as things warmed up from the cold we had last week. I figured it’d be the type of day some special things may happen. We tried a couple spots early on in the gulf without much luck… kind of surprising. So we decided to run further out, farther than I’ve been in a while! But we were up for an adventure and to try something new. We got deep into the gulf, totally out of phone range and probably a good ~70 miles from home! Near an area I had some numbers for, we saw some activity on the surface. We slowed down and saw a big school of permit! We got the trolling motor in the water and quietly approached, getting some shots with our shrimps and jigs! We ended up hooking a triple header! WOW! We landed all three fish after some effort, the largest being a 30 lber or so and the other two in the 20lb range. Great shot and what a way to start the day! After that the fish got a little spookier, but we kept working them and caught several more, including another triple header, and a couple doubles along with some singles. Just a banner morning of fishing! Once the sun got high though it was kind of over with. We checked another area and didn’t find much. Coming back we saw another school of fish, but they were definitely acting different and kind of on to us. We did get a few good shots on them, but they were running hard and not interested in feeding. We looked for tripletail on the way back inshore but did not see many and didn’t want to bother with small ones that we saw. After a very long ride in, we stopped and caught about 20 redfish on the way home for Arnold. And then headed on in! Wow banner day and I hope to see more of it in the future! I’m open tomorrow, may take the day off and rest as I hurt my back yesterday, though to be honest I am kind of itching to get out there again so we’ll see what happens!
Capt. Rick Stanczyk
Instagram: @richardstanczyk
Facebook: Islamorada Tarpon Fishing
