July 2017

7/28/17 July Fishing in Islamorada

July is almost over it’s hard to believe but here we are!  Fishing has been pretty great we’ve had a very good summer fishing in islamorada which is nice.  Most people don’t realize that some of the best fishing the Keys has to offer is July through October.  The crowds are generally gone, you have the summer weather so conditions are usually good (warm, calm), and plenty of fish are still around.  The heat is the only negative but I usually like to leave early on my trips and you can often get your good day worth of fishing done in the first few hours and come in a little early if you desire.  Tarpon are still the big draw for me here through the summer.  August is often a great time for them still, and as I’ve been telling people last year our best tarpon fishing of the year was in September and October as far as consistency and numbers went!  Both June and July we had very good tarpon fishing.  We were averaging a little over 2 fish per trip, which is pretty good.  Normally you are happy to average 1.5-1.75 fish a trip, and anything over 2 or more you are doing well.  Many trips we’ve landed 3 or more fish, as you get the hungry ‘summer time’ pack fish, where you can often have multiple hookups in a short amount of time.  The fish are generally smaller in size (30 – 60 lb), so you can catch ’em quickly and hook more before the bite dies down.  Also the fish can be caught all throughout the day especially in the everglades, some days you just have to put the time in to look for them.  Aside from tarpon there has been a good bite of trout and mangrove snapper in the bay.  Snook fishing hasn’t been quite as good as it was the last couple summers, but it’s been very buggy back there due to lots of rain we’ve had, and we haven’t quite had the summer time bait run that we did the last few years.  But still we’ve been catching some when we’ve tried.  If you are wanting to get down here and catch tarpon or anything else, don’t hesitate to drop me a line.  It’s easy to get something book short notice for the most part.

Capt. Rick Stanczyk