Well finally getting back to fishing some it’s been a little slow the last couple of months. Of course we had some late season hurricanes a month ago nothing that affected us majorly here but the west coast got hammered and it seemed to keep people away. We did have some high sustained winds which would of made fishing difficult around those times though. Now late November we are starting to get some real cold fronts we had one last week and then now this week its dropped back into the 60s here. Personally as you may know I love fishing around the cold fronts you get some opportunities you dont get any other time and while its not always great and can take patience, we’ve been doing it long enough to give the best shot at making it happen. Black drum, redfish, sheepshead all make themselves a little more known when the water temps dip into the 60s. I got out yesterday with Mark and we fished the cape and got into a pretty good snook bite early on. Not red hot but we caught them fairly early and as it warmed up it got better and better. Nothing spectacular size wise but we probably caught a dozen or 15 or so and a nice redfish. After an hour or two of that we tried some of the spots for the ‘big boys’ and were rewarded handsomely. We found some good size reds out there and a handful of black drum too in the 8 to 15 lb range. A few stops without a sniff and then the last place we stopped we got into some big donkey reds! The first two we pulled the hooks on and broke off – heartbreakers! They were pulling heavy drag and just not stopped. Then we gave it an extra few minutes and we wound up catching a nice 15 lb red and then another that was probably 25 lbs! Capt. Stephen also had some good fishing on the patch reefs this past weekend getting into some nice groupers out there as well as mangrove snapper and some big look downs at the bridge. But on our day I was so glad we made it happen you always want to get at least one of those big ones when you have a shot at them. Mark had an awesome time and will be back again soon. I’m fishing again the next two days and then business is starting to tick up for sure we’ve got a few trips a week here through Christmas.
I’ll be fishing myself some personally the week after Christmas so if you want to get on the calender give me a shout, the 26th through the 31st is open.
Capt. Rick Stanczyk
Instagram: @richardstanczyk
Facebook: Islamorada Tarpon Fishing
YouTube: Bud n’ Mary’s Marina
