2/18/17 Gulf and Backcountry Fishing in Islamorada in February

Got out with Eric and Brandon today and we mixed it up a bit.  Flat calm with light southeasterly breeze later in the day.  We caught the last trickle of incoming tide out on the mackerel grounds, and was a little worried since it was so calm that it’d be tough to get them going.  But it ended up being pretty good we probably caught a couple dozen mackerels in about an hour or so.  After that the boys had mentioned wanted to try for tarpon and I said there had been a few around when conditions had been right, and it looked like today it may of warmed up just enough to get some action out of them if they were around, so we tried that.  We ended up coming across a herd of them in one of the channels, and 2nd bait in the water we hooked a big 150 lber!  He fought hard and jumped a lot and we landed him, plus tons of blacktip sharks and eventually got a sawfish too.  No more tarpon bites but it’s a good day to get 1 especially this time of year.

Capt. Rick Stanczyk

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