Hadn’t gotten out much lately with the couple of hurricane scares we’ve had this month. But we had a nice window now and it was time to get my new 23 contender out there and put some time on her. The boat was AMAZING! I am so happy with the layout it is very fishable and easy to work out of. Rides just as good as the 25 in my opinion and has all the cool bells and whistles livescope, etc… So we had a calm day light north breeze which is typically good for some of those big snook and such back there. Also being October there is lots of bait around and life in general back there. Got out with dad and Nick who works in the shop. We marked some huge schools of what we thought were snook in the first area we fished. Didn’t get any bites but then we started making some drifts and working the baits as we dragged along. Sure enough we caught a decent one, and followed it up with a couple more on the next couple of drifts! Really cool stuff and I swear there were thousands of them down there from what we could see on the sonar. After that we hit a couple of other spots without much luck but then we got into a huge school of big redfish! We caught a couple big donkeys that were in the 25 lb range, plus a couple of other good size snook. Move again and got one more nice red in the next stop. They just kept comin’ one of those days when you can do no wrong. We then tried a few other spots on the way home one of them had some big sharks lurking and I could see some good fish too but they didn’t want to bite… I don’t blame them with the sharks around. But then the last stop we made we caught a couple more big snook to finish up. Awesome to see and yes its October which is often a good time to have a chance at those big bull redfish here. Tarpon fishing should still be good for a few more weeks and lots of mullet around. My favorite time of year to fish them baits easy, lots of fish, and very little pressure. If you want to get out here in the next few weeks give me a shout I’ve got plenty of availability and am taking trips personally. And the new boat is ready to rock!
Capt. Rick Stanczyk
Instagram: @richardstanczyk
Facebook: Islamorada Tarpon Fishing
YouTube: Bud n’ Mary’s Marina
