10/21/17 + 10/22/17 October Backcountry Florida Keys Fishing

Well the last two days we ended up pretty good despite having 25 mph winds!  It started cranking out of the east and made our conditions a little tough.  Yesterday I had a last minute trip with a couple who fished with my brother the day before.  It got a little too rough for them so we gave the backcountry a try.  We didn’t catch a bunch of fish but we got some quality ones, including a first tarpon, first snook, a big jack crevelle, and some big lemon sharks.  Not too shabby.  Today I had some young fellas visiting from Miami who were students there.  They wanted to try for tarpon.  We ran back to the canals of the everglades mainland as it was protected there and there had been a lot of small tarpon in there the last few weeks I’d been getting shots at.  The tarpon weren’t in the first place we stopped but we did get on a good snook bite, landing double digits I’d say and missing just as many.  We then tried for straight tarpon the last hour, we did find some even though they weren’t showing very much on this day.  We jumped one he didn’t stay on the hook for us, and caught a small cubera snapper.  That was about all she wrote but not a bad two days of fishing for the conditions.  Fall is here and it should get better for certain things as the weather cools down.  Tarpon will likely slow down, but snook, redfish, mackerel, and others should start to fire up!  Give me a shout to get out there.

Capt. Rick Stanczyk
Instagram: @richardstanczyk
Facebook: Islamorada Tarpon Fishing

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