2/19/17 February Fishing in Islamorada the Gulf of Mexico

Got out with Eric, Eric, and Vinny today.  We had slick calm weather most of the day, then it picked up a light breeze out of the west.  In the morning we tried the mackerels, they weren’t easy but we kept at it and ended up with 15 or so after about an hour and a half.  When it’s clear, calm, and not hard current, it can be tough fishing.  But we wanted them for shark/tarpon bait so we made it happen.  We found a lot of tarpon where they were yesterday, but we kind of caught the tide change so had very little current there.  Fish were rolling and busting everywhere too but didn’t so much interest in us.  By the time the tide turned and got going out, they had mostly moved on.  Though 3 other boats were in the area and I don’t think any of them had any action out of them at all… guess it was just too pretty for them!  The boys didn’t want to spend the rest of the day doing that, after an hour or so we had caught probably a half dozen sharks (blacktips).  We decided to look for tripletails and it was surprisingly good!  There hadn’t been many out there, but with the light west breeze kicking we saw quite a few probably close to 20 or so.  We caught 3 keepers including a large 12.5 lber!  The biggest I’ve caught since last year when we got one that was 13.8 right around this time too.  We caught another half dozen small guys and that was the end of the day.  Not too shabby!

Capt. Rick Stanczyk

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