We got out today with my dad, our good friend Ron, and Capt. Stephen who is running my boat for me now when I’m not fishing. We ventured out back to see if some big fish were around. Found quite a bit of life in a few different areas – various jacks, sharks, etc… which seemed promising. We got on to some nice tripletail first thing and caught an awesome double header of larger size ones. After that we moved around a bit and found one area that had some schools of bigger fish around. We pulled the hook on a nice snook we think, and then Ron caught a small cobia and also jumped off a small tarpon next to the boat! Very interesting as the tarpon were in this particular spot last time we fished too so good to see them again. We moved around nearby and caught another cobia but this one was bigger close to legal size around 33 inches but we let him go! Next stop we hooked what we’re pretty sure were a couple more large snook that we pulled the hooks on both of them unfortunately – just tough luck! After that not a whole lot but we waited for the tide to change and then tried the same spot earlier where we caught the cobias and sure enough we hooked double header big snooks! One unfortunately got eaten by a big shark but we landed the other one a nice 38 incher for Ron again. Great to see good life back there and we did have some tarpon flopping around in a couple different areas so that is promising for the summer coming up as I like to fish in the backcountry for tarpon that time of year. If you are wanting to go fish give me a shout I’ll be taking some trips short notice but not planning much in advance myself because my kids will be out of school. But Capt. Stephen is readily available and he more or less knows my playbook as he’s been fishing with me a lot lately so you’ll be in good hands with him on my boat.
Capt. Rick Stanczyk
Instagram: @richardstanczyk
Facebook: Islamorada Tarpon Fishing
YouTube: Bud n’ Mary’s Marina
