Well summer is rolling by quickly as we are well into August already. The fishing has been just about as hot as the weather though thankfully! I’ve still been focused mostly on tarpon as is usually the case with me. Summer is often one of my favorite times of year to fish them, as the spawning business is done with and many of the resident fish show back up and are hungry and ready to feed. This july was not quite as good as last year’s epic fishing, but had been consistent none the less. However August things have honestly gotten a little more hit and miss so far. As of late it seems you can usually get a good crack early on the tarpon if you are lucky, and then hadn’t been seeing much past 9 AM or so. But that can all change in a hurry as we know and as I like to say you don’t know unless you go. Thankfully though we’ve had some pretty epic fishing for other things. Snook and redfish fishing has been about as good as I’ve ever seen it. And this can be any time of day often too though mornings are still usually nicer with the heat. For my customers that haven’t been wanting just tarpon, i’ve usually been fishing the islands and shorelines and catching 50 or more redfish/snook is not uncommon right now. The other day I had Oliver and Matt out for a half day and the boys put on a clinic catching probably 50 redfish, 20 snook, and a big lemon shark in just a 4 hour trip! Today I had James, Alex, and Amy out. We did a 3/4 day and they probably caught 30 snook and 40 reds. Just incredible fishing. We also had pretty epic fishing for tripletail in june and early july, and there are still a decent number of them floating around but you would likely have to put some time in looking for them. I have not been out in the gulf much lately as we had a bit of southwesterly wind for a while there with some of the weather systems that have been grazing us. Not that it’s been crazy rough, but that wind direction isn’t very good for out there plus it does create a bite of a swell even without the wind cranking. But right now we have very light/flat calm winds for the next week, and then just a light southeasterly. So who knows there could still be some big schools of permit out there. If you are interested in fishing, give me a shout!
Capt. Rick Stanczyk
Instagram: @richardstanczyk
Facebook: Islamorada Tarpon Fishing
