Fishing Reports

Got out with John and his son Andrew today.  They are down from Wisconsin for the badgers/canes orange bowl game!  They wanted to try and mix things up as they had read my recent reports and I’ve been doing that a lot lately.  It’s nice some times to try different things especially when some things aren’t always red hot.  We hit the mackerel grounds first and it was a little bumpy getting their with the 20mph north wind, but we made it OK.  The spanish mackerel were chewing we must’ve caught over 2 dozen in little over an hour.  We then hit the tarpon channels and the tarpon were definitely there!  I knew though with the northerly wind they might not be real happy again.  We had plenty of shark action and definitely had tarpon around us, but they didn’t want to play.  Once the tide quit the wind also laid down a good bit.  We decided to go look for tripletails on the buoys.  That was productive we saw several of them and the boys each caught 1 and had several other shots but we had some pulled hooks and miscues, but fun doing it which is what counts.  We then tried a snook spot back around the mainland and didn’t get any snook, but we did get a very nice 6 or 7 lb redfish for Andrew!  The wind now kicked back more to the east and picked up a little bit again.  We steamed back to the tarpon grounds to try that again with the tide falling now.  Didn’t see quite as many fish but we did see a few and anchored up in that area.  Unfortunately though no bites again but we did get more sharks, and Andrew got a big 90-100 lb black tip which really put on a show!  All in all another great day though with good variety and plenty of action.  Back at it tomorrow I’ll likely do a similar game plan as it’s been working for me.  Wind is suppose to be lighter at 10 mph, and tomorrow night we will be getting back down into the mid 60s so the tarpon thing will likely be over for a while after tomorrow.  Then it’ll get slightly colder each night for the next several nights through the weekend.  Should be good for our drum/red/snook fishing in the ‘glades and I’m sure the mackerels won’t mind either.

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

Got out with Richard and Luke Cromwell today, return customers of mine that hadn’t been down in the last couple years.  Was good to see them and get out fishing for sure.  Fishing was pretty good we did a bit of everything.  Tried snook in the morning without much success in the first couple stops, but eventually found a few.  Lost one big 10+ lber next to the boat he cut us off I sword it was a shark or something, but we at least got a real good look at him!  We then found some nice sea trout and a few jacks fishing the shorelines, no more snook or redfish though which we were hoping for.  Since it was so calm and nice I figured we’d mix it up and try the gulf.  Lots of triple tail out there we caught several, mostly little guys but one keeper.  We did find a monster 12+ lb fish that we baited and got boatside.  I took a nice video but we unfortunately pulled the hook on him!  Heartbreaker would’ve loved a picture of that, but it’s part of the fishing game and we got the fight and memories anyways.  After that we gave the tarpon a try again.  They were still out there and it looked like slightly better conditions.  The water was a tad warmer, the wind was lighter and more easterly today.  We gave it a hard go and had some shark action, and did get a nice 20 lb cobia that we released. The tarpon were being tough though.  After about 1.5 hours and 4 moves though, we finally got lucky and hooked a nice 90 lber!  Luke fought him well and we got him boatside for some nice pictures.  Persistence paid off!  This time of year it’s no guarantee with them but if it’s warm and the conditions are right, it can definitely happen.  After that we tried one more spot for a possible snook or redfish, but no luck and we headed home.  Just a great day the boys were thrilled with the variety and several nice quality fish, even if we didn’t get them all in the boat!

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

Got out with Mark and his twin sons Steven and Tyler for a days fishing.  I had the last few days off over the holidays but loaded up on bait yesterday afternoon to be ready for this busy week coming up.  We had a mild front come in last night and it slightly chilled things down, not terribly, but I knew it might affect the good tarpon fishing we had the previous few days.  It can be a very fickle thing this time of year.  The water tempeatures were down to about 71, and they were around 74 a few days ago, and we had a northerly breeze in the morning.  The tarpon were around though we saw a ton of fish.  We gave it a good effort but did not have a bit, but we did get quite a few sharks and bluefish.  We also tried a spot for snook real quick at the start but no luck with that.  The tide took forever to start moving out which also didn’t help our tarpon cause.  Anyways we decided to mix it up after that and had great fun with the spanish mackerel.  I think we caught about 2 dozen in an hour.  We also found a few triple tails later on that were good for something different.  Sight casting on the buoys for triple tail is a lot of fun.  We decided to try the tarpon again in the afternoon, seeing as the water had warmed up a bit more and the wind was a little more easterly.  We saw plenty of fish again, but unfortunately no bites they were just not happy.  The shark bite was good though we caught plenty more blacktips then called it a day.  Back at it tomorrow might try some other stuff but will likely give the tarpon a shot at some point.

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

Got out for an afternoon half day with Sarah and Michael today.  Normally I don’t like doing afternoon halves, but with business being off still with the hurricane I didn’t want to turn it down.  The reason I normally dont do afternoon trips is the afternoon is often the toughest time of day to fish (you know the old saying about the early bird gets the worm right).  It’s often tougher to get bait, the sun is the hottest/brightest so fish can be lethargic or leary as they can see/sense more, and other boats may have been to many of the spots you want to go to already who left in the morning.  I just like giving my customers the best shot at catching fish, though we can still often get it done as we did today.  We were able to find a good school of pilchards and loaded the live well with them.  We fished around some of the islands in the bay as it was a bit rough out on the patch reefs out front.  The first stop didn’t yield a whole bunch, the other day we found some nice mangroves there and a few redfish.  We moved a bit and got a few keeper snappers there including one nice size 15 incher.  After that it slowed down and we tried another island.  Here we picked a few more keeper snappers.  It was tough to get them to eat the pilchards, just lots of small snappers.  We started mixing up our bait with shrimp and had to pick through a few little snappers but got a few more keepers.  We made one more move and then got our limit finally.  It took some work but we had plenty for dinner.  We caught a few jack crevelles too.  I made one more move and we had a few more snappers to throw back, saw a few baby tarpon rolling here and I was hoping maybe we’d get one but no luck.  We headed back in and had a nice ride home, and Sarah and Michael both had a great time.  I’ll have the next couple days off but am open to fish on the 26th of December if anyone wants to go!  After that I’m pretty busy until Jan 4th or so I think.  But I have plenty of mullet and some pilchards in my bait pen, so all prepped to go if anyone wants to give it a shot the day after christmas let me know!  Hope everyone had a great holiday, merry christmas!

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

Got out with Eric and his twin sons, Evan and Ethan, today for a full day islamorada backcountry fishing charter.  They kind of left it up to me as far as what to fish for.  I told them we had tarpon action the day before, and the right conditions for it even though this isn’t really ‘tarpon season’ in december.  But it was still warm with fairly calm winds, and the water temperatures are in the right zone plus we found a bunch of fish the day before.  They were down to try so we decided to catch some fresh mullet to start the day.  We found some nice muds with fairly easy mullet in them, I think we got 3 dozen or so.  We hit the channels first thing as opposed to later in the afternoon like yesterday.  Boy there were some tarpon there today!  I think hundreds of fish!  They were free jumping, rolling, busting bait, and doing all the things tarpon like to do.  Definitely a dream scenario!  We didn’t have a red hot bite but we managed to fool a couple and Eric landed a nice big 150+ lb fish, and a 80 lb fish!  Great fights and jumps out of them both we got some good pictures.  We also got another sawfish and a blacktip shark.  It was great to see especially in the middle of winter.  But when it’s 80 degrees out something like this can happen any time of year here in the Florida Keys.  After that the tide slowed down and the fish seemed to lay down and settle a bit, so I figured it’d be a good time to try something else.  We hit the gulf for spanish mackerel which I knew would be good action for the boys.  They did great and we fished for an hour and probably caught close to 20 mackerels!  Plenty of blue runners too for rod bending to keep the kids busy.  After that the boys wanted to try and catch a snook and I said I might know a spot.  I had some leftover pilchards from yesterday which I never ended up using and wanted to, as I made a big mess trying to catch them and didn’t want that to be for nothing!  They went to good use and we caught a couple redfish, some nice size mangrove snappers, and one snook.  I think we had a couple other snook bites too but we missed them.  All in all just a banner day with a backcountry SLAM for the boat.  Eric had even brought some bananas on board with him but even they couldn’t bring us bad luck!  I have an afternoon half day tomorrow, but am available in the morning if anybody wants to do a half day trip.  I have bait and know where some tarpon are, doesn’t get any better then that lol!

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