Capt. Rick Stanczyk's Fishing Islamorada

Got out with my dad and friends Stephen and Russ today for a day of fishing.  Yesterday I tarpon fished all day with Blake and Robert.  It was a tough day we worked very hard to catch bait, not as much as I would’ve liked but enough to have gotten the job done.  But fishing was also tough found some tarpon but just not happy, we did catch some sharks and a few big jacks.  We jumped one tarpon literally last bait out in the last stop of the day.  But just didn’t stay on for us.  But today we were rewarded handsomely.  The winds laid down it had been blowing a fair bit the last couple days before.  Water cleaned up and we had nice incoming tide.  We were after big snooks and we found a good handful.  We caught 4 between 15 and 25 lbs, the largest being one of the biggest I’ve seen back there a true 25ish lbs.  We also caught a couple in the 8 to 10 lb range, normally considered a large snook (for here) but we’ve been spoiled now finding these monsters!  Anyways great to see.  Summer can be a great time for snook fishing and when it’s calm the chance for monster snook is there.  You may have to fish all day to have a shot at a 15 plus lber here but to catch one is well worth it.  My dad has the patience to sit there and there isn’t any pressure on my end, so it’s a little different then sometimes with clients we feel pressure to put people on action especially when we know you might only get 1 or 2 bites all day out of those trophy class fish.  But it’s nice when you catch several in a day!

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

Well summer is officially here and that means it’s time for big everglades snook.  When things warm up this time of year and it gets calm the snook spawn usually is on and we get a lot of fish showing up offshore and large ones at that.  Really have been waiting for this all year as we had an epic year last year in the summer and fall with them.  Today was the day I happened to have a cancellation so my dad wanted to go along with our good friends Dave and his son Jack.  We caught fish almost everywhere we went.  Not big numbers but just 1 or 2 good solid bites off each spot.  Snook in the 10-15 lb range, with a few in the 20 lb range and one that was probably 25 lbs!  I think we got 8 big ones in total ranging from 15 to 25 lbs.  We also had a big black drum get eaten by a shark unfortunately and caught a bunch of smaller snook too when we tried a spot.  Just an epic day and like I said we’ve been waiting for a while for this to get good and today was the day.  We had a nice light northeast breeze and over cast all day so really about as good of conditions as you could ask for and that set them off.  We’re usually happy to catch 1 or 2 nice snook like this in a day but we were lucky today.  But now through October chances of catching good snook are pretty good.

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