Backcountry Fishing Reports

Great couple of days with Gary and Melissa visiting from across the pond!  We had tremendous wind yesterday and we decided to make a long run up the coast to get out of it.  Luckily the Contender is quick and great for those 50 mile runs like that.  We had good fishing, nothing red hot but quality for sure!  A good half dozen reds of nice size, and maybe a dozen or so snook.  We also got Gary a tarpon for the SLAM, and Melissa caught a nice 30 lb goliath grouper.  We also had a good mix of ladyfish and jacks to keep the rods bent.

On the second day the winds let up nicely and more northerly.  We fished a little closer to home around the Flamingo area.  We had great fishing, getting into a ton of smaller snook and redfish.  We got one nice snook and a handful of better size reds too.  After that we went in search of something bigger.  We were hoping for some big snook but no luck with them, though I think we did miss one good bite.  But we did get a few decent size reds, and a couple black drum.  One of the drums was a whopper too close to 20 lbs!  Unusual especially that size for it not being real cold yet.  Anyways a fun day 2.

The fall bait run is totally in effect and there are definitely good fishing opportunities.  Lots of tarpon around I didn’t really mess with them today, but that could be good fishing too.  Give me a shout if you want to get out there, October is one of my favorite months of the year to go fishing.

Capt. Rick Stanczyk
Instagram: @richardstanczyk
Facebook: Islamorada Tarpon Fishing

Well the scare from Hurricane Dorian has come and gone.  We didn’t get a whole lot here from it, though we did have a couple of days of hard west wind but no more than a regular real windy day.  I got out the last couple of days though and am happy to report that fishing has not slowed down a lick – in fact perhaps the wind/rain actually helped by cooling things down a bit and stirring things up a bit.  We had great success with snook, redfish, and tarpon on Friday.  Today we had the same though not quite as many redfish, but several lunker size snook in the 36/37 inch range!  Just truly incredible.  There were also a good amount of tarpon both days as well, though we didn’t spend a ton of time targeting them but did catch one each day.  Seems to be quite a bit of bait around in the backcountry and I think hurricane Dorian perhaps helped trigger an early fall bait run as I’ve heard reports up the coast that the mullet run has started up there.  This usually occurs in October, but with high winds from such a storm you never know what’ll happen.  Good news is this coming week we also have some northeast winds which is usually good for that fall bait run as well.  September and October are some of my favorite months to fish down here as you get the place to yourself often, and with those fall conditions sometimes you see some pretty epic fishing too.  I also have some good discounted rates, so give me a shout and let’s get out there!

Capt. Rick Stanczyk
Instagram: @richardstanczyk
Facebook: Islamorada Tarpon Fishing

Well we are in the clear from Hurricane Dorian thankfully.  I had a busy week on the books starting today, however unfortunately I’ve lost 4 trips over it due to the possibility of this dang storm…  Today was the first day, and it was absolutely beautiful and slick calm.  So luckily my dad was up for going with our friend Ron Modra and Debra who works at Bud n marys.  We headed out early and first stop we found a bunch of tarpon rolling, we casted to them and jumped one and that was about the only good shot we got.  Next we got a nice cobia.  Was hoping we’d find some more but nothing else came up.  Second stop we got a good size trout.  Then we decided to run further up the road and fish some areas that I’ve been going with the new boat that are far away.  It was loaded with smaller snook and redfish, though we did get one decent size snook in there too.  After that it stayed calm so we headed out into the gulf.  This is where we started to see some crazy things…  Two big schools of permit, probably 100 fish in each!  Though they weren’t too happy we chased them casting crabs, shrimp, and even artificials… but they just did not want to eat.  We had one crush a crab possibly, but that was it and the little jacks were eating the shrimps and artificials so quick you couldn’t even have a chance, they even ate a few of the crabs too.  We kept moving and we found another school of things with some birds following them around.  At first it looked like more jacks, but then all of a sudden we were surrounded by monster bull redfish!  Again it was hard to get a bait to them as the jacks ate our shrimp and pinfish.  But I quickly grabbed the biggest crab we had, and we hooked a nice 20 lb red that I caught.  After that though we lost the school and it was about time to head in anyways as we were still a good ways from home.  We did stop on one more wreck on the way home, and caught a nice little goliath grouper on light tackle which was cool.  The west wind started to kick up a little on the way home but luckily we were going with it.  Wow what a special day and just some unreal stuff that you don’t get to see all the time.  Unfortunately we are going to get some bad west wind and possibly rain the next few days, so it may not be great for fishing.  But by the weeks end it should be getting better.  September and October are some of my favorite months of the year for fishing down here – you really get the place to yourself and when conditions are right, you may see some wild stuff like we saw today.

Capt. Rick Stanczyk
Instagram: @richardstanczyk
Facebook: Islamorada Tarpon Fishing

Wow what a day with John visiting from Ohio! It was weird weather – light north breeze with a tad of a chill to it. We got into the Backcountry and it was very pleasant and stayed somewhat overcast most the day, but never rained on us. John was up for catching anything, and we had struggled a bit the day before tarpon fishing (we jumped 2,but couldn’t keep them on the hooks but did catch lots of sharks). So we opted to mix it up some. We found some very pretty water with the north wind helping clean things up, and bait everywhere likely from that as well. The snook and reds were chewing… We went through 30 pinfish in a couple hours, and luckily had plenty of big shrimp too which they loved. It was my kind of fishing, we worked the trolling motor and fished along, catching as we moved. We found a few spots loaded with fish too. Some very big snook were had later too in some good honey holes. Also a lot of our redfish were good size too. Just awesome fishing and John was spoiled having never caught either a snook or red before. We looked for tarpon briefly for the last hour and found a handful, but no cooperation there though we did catch a handful of sharks. But still what a day! The kind that keeps you coming back when those magical conditions arrive and it’s like a dream out there!

Capt. Rick Stanczyk
Instagram: @richardstanczyk
Facebook: Islamorada Tarpon Fishing

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