Backcountry Fishing Reports

Had Irv and Dan out for the day today. Things cooled off and it was a stiff north breeze. Dan hadn’t been in the backcountry and with the weather change, I figured the tarpon fishing would likely be slow. So we decided to hit the creeks and shorelines. First few stops were good, lots of nice trout and a handful of redfish working some shoreline. Got our limit for dinner easily. After that we worked some creeks. Last trickle of tide we picked away at a few redfish. Then when the tide turned, the bite picked up we got several nice size snook, and a few other small ones. A good flurry of redfish as well. After the tide started rolling though things slowed down. We worked our way out and bounced around. Lots and lots of boats back there, I think a lot of people had the same idea and very busy with spring break. Anyways, hard to go where you wanted there were boats all over, but we picked a few more redfish in a few other areas. And a few areas without much going on. It was a fun day, looks like it will be similar conditions tomorrow but getting even colder. We will see what happens back there!

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

So had yesterday off and we had a major weather change with a big cold front coming in. These can be good for a lot of our backcountry fishing in the winter, when we are regularly getting them and the water is already on the chilly side. However after it’s been in the 80s for nearly a month and felt like summer, it causes a drastic temperature change that can shut down a lot of the backcountry fishing. I wasn’t back there yesterday but this morning in a few areas, the water temperature dropped nearly 15 degrees from what it was, so I imagine that was quite the shock. On these types of days, you may be waiting around until mid day for fish to bite as they just aren’t use to that. I had Bruce, bill, bill, and Brian for a 3/4 day and we opted to just fish close and stay on the Atlantic side where the temperature swing wasn’t nearly as drastic and the warmer gulf stream keeps the water temperature more stable. It was a good bet, as we had a killer day on the patch reefs. Tons of various snapper, about a dozen small grouper, yellow Jacks, porgies, hogfish, bluefish, pompano, and a few other various critters. We ended up cutting our trip to a half day as we went through a lot of bait in a short amount of time, and the shrimp have been in short supply so you can’t just take as many as you’d like always. Looks like it is suppose to get back up into the 80s on Saturday and the water should have a chance to warm back up then too as we are suppose to have a brief window of calmer weather starting Friday evening until Saturday night. Tarpon fishing is likely a better bet around the bridges now until it has a chance to warm up more in the backcountry. But hopefully by Sunday when I’m fishing again that will be the case!

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

Well I’ve gotten almost into full on tarpon mode as it’s been warm and calm the last few days and the fish have really shown up and been biting pretty good!  Today I had Matt and his wife Emily and we landed 4 tarpon, and jumped off a few others.  The day before I had Rich Riolo, long time bud n marys customer, with his friend Kevin and son Blitz.  They landed 2 tarpon, and jumped off another 4.  The day before that I had Scott and we found plenty of tarpon, but on this day the wind was howling and the fish just didn’t seem happy.  But we still made a good day of it catching a few sharks, a bunch of redfish, a handful of snook and trout, and a nice 35 lb goliath grouper on light tackle.  We’ve also been catching tripletail just about every day out there in between tarpon fishing.  Not a lot of big ones, but fun fishing for them anyways.  As we get into March, I’ll likely be more and more into tarpon fishing and I won’t be updating this blog as much.  So follow my other website islamoradatarpon.com for those daily updated fishing reports.  I’ll still post on here on occasion, or if we do some days where we aren’t targeting tarpon.  But it’s definitely the silver king’s time of year now.

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

Got out with Scott and his family today for a full day.  We ran back into the everglades with hopes of tarpon, but a backup plan of redfish, snook, etc…  South breeze which we don’t like too much, it’s a bad wind for fishing our backcountry in many areas.  Good thing we had the backup plan, there were not many tarpon about but we did manage to get a bite out of one.  He did not stay on the hook for us though.  We ended up catching quite a few redfish though probably close to three dozen or so, and maybe a half dozen small snook and a good dozen or so sea trout.  We hooked a couple big sharks too but they broke us off unfortunately.  Winds are suppose to swing back northeast tomorrow, and it’ll be windy but then Wednesday it starts to get calm, and Thursday through Sunday looks very calm I think it’ll be great fishing those days.  Anyways you gotta fish your conditions and that is what we did today, and we made a good day of it.  Back at it tomorrow.

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

Great day with Trent and Shannon down from NY. They got stuck in bad weather we were suppose to fish yesterday, but luckily I had today scheduled off for maintenance and I was able to get Caribee Boat Sales and Marina to do my service/warranty work Thursday afternoon. They do a great job looking after the guides with Yamahas. So we went today and it was a little better weather wise anyhow. Winds were slightly less though still a little breezy. We found a bunch of bait early on which we got a few throws on and loaded the wells. Tarpon was on Trents list, and I told him we’d been catching a few but we’ve had to put a little time in as they weren’t pulling us out of the boat quite yet with the chillier water. But things have warmed up each day, and today I think the water was close to 80 degrees back there. Anyways we didn’t see a lot of tarpon at first, but I did think we were in a few of them. We set up and within 10 minutes had a big shark on, and then about 5 minutes later, Trent had a nice tarpon on! We landed her, about a 60 lber. Got a few good jump shots and had the fish to hand on the leader, but she shook loose before we could set up for a boatside picture. After that, we decided getting one right off the bat was good so we went after some other stuff which I felt was a good move. We had to work at it, but as the tide dropped low the fishing got better and better. We got into quite a few redfish, and about a half dozen or so snook. Also Trent caught another small tarpon, and we had a couple other bites out of them. Great fishing! Once the tide came up, we ran out towards the gulf as the wind had laid down a little more. We found a few tripletails and caught several of them. We found a pack of tarpon offshore while doing that. We set up and caught a shark, and then made a move and soon Trent was hooked up to his 3rd tarpon of the day – a big 130 lber! We fought her and same thing got the fish to hand, but she made one big run and got under the boat with the big swells and popped off the leader before we could get pics. Oh well, again we got some good jump shots. Anyhow, fantastic fishing we seemed to just do everything right today and made it look easy, which it definitely wasn’t an easy conditions today. But you never know unless you go!

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