Got out with new customers Aaron and his son Alex today for a full day trip. They hadn’t been in the backcountry before and were eager to try some new types of fishing. We had fairly blustery conditions, 15-20 mph easterly winds. I didn’t fish the last couple days but Saturday it blew 30+ mph as we had a major weather system come in… didn’t get very cold but it was a cold front and did drop temperatures down slightly 5 to 10 degrees maybe. We had the last trickle of falling tide and caught a black drum to start then nothing but catfish. Moved around a few spots waiting for the tide change and didn’t catch much. Once the tide started in we started to pick away, a few redfish, a couple more drum, and a few snook. Did that for an hour or so, no monsters but some decent fish. We made another move and then got into some more fish. Again not every cast but we caught them in flurries, a good handful of redfish, a real nice 12 lb snook and a 12 lb red, a few more small black drum, a sheepshead, and a few other randoms like jacks and ladyfish. After that we went and fished a shallow sand bar that had some fish on it last week. Lucky us it was holding again today and we caught probably 2 dozen redfish here, another half dozen snook, some trout, and a few other odds and ends. So I would say the bite got better and better as the day went on and we finished strong. The boys caught a mess of fish and the wind didn’t deter us. Looks like we have some calmer weather tomorrow, I’m taking my dad fun fishing, then another front this weekend will drop it into the 60s at night! Looking forward to some cooling off, we should get some big fish showing up when the water temperatures dip down into the 60s, may take a day or two for them to adjust but getting to the ‘cold weather’ fishing time that I love in the winter! Have a few more days open through the 24th then I’ll be going out of town for Thanksgiving and back around December 3rd. Plenty of days open in December give me a shout if you are interested!
Capt. Rick Stanczyk
Instagram: @richardstanczyk
Facebook: Islamorada Tarpon Fishing
