Got out with Gus and his friend Capt. Rick Rodriguez who runs a charter boat here in town. I hadn’t met Rick before but he got my name through a mutual friend. Gus and him wanted to catch some snook and had been friends for a long time, so Rick didn’t mind being the tourist for a day. I caught a bunch of bait yesterday so we were well prepared and headed out early. Live pilchards for backcountry fishing make a huge difference when the water is fairly warm like it is. Snook just love live pilchards! We found them in the first 3 spots we fished. Not a ton of fish, but we probably caught half a dozen in each stop. We also found a few nice size spotted seatrout. Even though november is snook season in florida we opted for catch and release, as I don’t really like to kill snook as there are other more plentiful fish that are just as good to eat. If you are wondering about how to fish for snook in the florida keys, it’s pretty simple. We fish circle hooks with either free lined, or lightly weighted, and throw them in known ‘snook holes’. Snook like to hang out often along the mangrove-laden shorelines, creek mouths, and oyster bars. Some of these are easy to see, others you have to know where they lie in the water. Anyways it was good action in the morning. Later on in the day we had a couple spots with nothing, then we found a few more snook and got a nice juvenile redfish fishing a little shoreline of an island. Later on we found a bunch of small tarpon rolling about and tried to get them to play, but not much luck with that. We did get a nice 50 lb bull shark though on our light tackle rig which was a fun way to end the day. It was gorgeous in the everglades and I was happy to see the water looked about as good as I’ve seen it since hurricane irma, hopefully some more cool weather will keep it that way and our winter time fishing will pick up with more redfish, drum, and sheepshead along with snook. Anyways I’m open most of this week if anybody wants to go, look me up!
Capt. Rick Stanczyk
Instagram: @richardstanczyk
Facebook: Islamorada Tarpon Fishing
