Backcountry Fishing Reports

Well I had Brett and his buddy Cam out today visiting from the west coast California.  They wanted to do a bit more casting and action fishing so we didn’t focus heavy on tarpon.  The summer july tarpon fishing has been a little hit & miss as of late, been catching some fish but it’s really been a lot of work to produce a handful of bites.  So you better hope you catch the ones you get!  There are some tarpon around but yes just having to move around a lot, fish hard and pick through sharks & catfish, and make the most of your opportunities.  And they are moving around so they are in one area one day and gone the next so sometimes a lot of looking is required.  But anyways we skipped worry about all that and focused on snook fishing which was very good.  We were able to get some nice pilchards for bait and fished some islands and had a great snook bite, catching a couple dozen plus a few redfish as well.  We ended up getting some tripletail that were floating in the bay as well including a few nice keeper size ones that we released.  Then we finally did happen to stumble into a spread out group of tarpon in the last hour, and we put a little effort in and did manage to jump 1 off he didn’t stay on the hook.  But oh well can’t always control that my anglers did a great job not doing anything wrong just bad luck.

As we enter August things are slowing down a little bit with business (finally) I do have some open days the first couple weeks of August as of now.  If you are wanting to go fishing it can still be very productive just follow what your guide suggests!  Once we get into September and October those are really honestly some of my favorite times of year to fish as you get the place to yourself.  Also don’t forget to sign up to my mailing list to get updates on when I open up fishing days for next year, I’m just going to be taking more short notice bookings during prime season (feb – jul) and doing an email blast 1st come 1st serve.

Capt. Rick Stanczyk
Instagram: @richardstanczyk
Facebook: Islamorada Tarpon Fishing
YouTube: Bud n’ Mary’s Marina

Wow what an insane day with my dad Richard and our friend Pete.  Hadn’t gone after the big girl snooks in a while I’ve been mostly tarpon fishing as of late.  But we gave it a go today and I will say we had a little bit of a good north breeze which last year we had real good fishing one day with a similar late spring/summer day with north wind I remember catching a lot of big snook.  Didn’t expect the same today but boy did it turn out that way.  We ended up catching half a dozen snook all in the 15 to close to 30 lb range, including one that was Pete’s personal best and one that was maybe one of my dad’s biggest back there as well.  Just great to see and hopefully a good sign for what’s to come this summer.  We had such a good few months a couple years ago catching these over slot snook and then in the last year there had been a lot of mud and nasty water everywhere and they seemed to get much harder to find but good to see them again.  Pete is considering a mount of his snook through Gray Taxidermy which I always suggest to my anglers if they catch that fish of a lifetime!

Capt. Rick Stanczyk
Instagram: @richardstanczyk
Facebook: Islamorada Tarpon Fishing
YouTube: Bud n’ Mary’s Marina

It’s middle of march… fishing has been pretty good.  Tarpon is really starting to get more into full swing, however the bite has been best locally around the bridges and not as much in the backcountry.  But I’ve been fishing the backcountry more just because the bridges have been super crowded and a bit crazy with spring break etc…  We’ve also gotten into some snook the last week, plenty of trout/ladyfish on a day where we were struggling with other stuff, and a variety of sharks.  Please watch the video and subscribe to my YouTube channel for more awesome content!

Capt. Rick Stanczyk
Instagram: @richardstanczyk
Facebook: Islamorada Tarpon Fishing
YouTube: Bud n’ Mary’s Marina