Well with a late cold front several days ago fishing got a little tricky this week. We had a few days of having to work a bit harder but still able to put some decent catches together of snook and redfish. Nothing super glorious as we had a lot of wind and it swung south and that makes many of the areas I like to fish a little less productive. But yesterday we decided to take a gamble and made a long run up the coast to further grounds. Often times this area is in the lee on a hard south/southeast wind and you can still have decent fishing especially on your falling tides when much of the other backcountry is ‘mudded out.’ We still had to work hard but were able to pick away at some smaller snooks. But then we were rewarded we found a school of juvenile tarpon, casted in to them and we hooked a monster snook 38 incher! We then caught a small tarpon and got another boatside that came off. Then we caught another monster snook 41 inches and maybe the biggest I’ve had landed on my boat we don’t see too many that size here in South Florida. Anyways just awesome day! I was back out today with my regulars Pride and Cile, we tried for a repeat performance but it was much tougher today. Couldn’t get much going up the road except for some smaller snapper, trout, jacks, mackerels, ladyfish, etc… When the tide finally turned on the way home we did get into a good bite of snook and a few reds, and finished the day up with a small goliath. But boy had to sweat it out until the last couple hours of the day!
Major cold front coming in tomorrow for 3 days, suppose to get into the mid 50s the next 3 nights. So it’ll likely shut the tarpon fishing down for a good week or so I’d imagine, at least until it’s likely worthwhile to invest time again. But who knows maybe some winter time backcountry bigguns’ will show up!
Capt. Rick Stanczyk
Instagram: @richardstanczyk
Facebook: Islamorada Tarpon Fishing
