2/28/18 Late February Backcountry Fishing Report

Well February is just about over with and boy has it been a warm one!  I think I read it's the hottest February on record in the South Florida area, with it being around 8 degrees above average temperature for the entire month.  We haven't had any cold weather though we have had a good bit of wind, typical spring time winds.  The early season tarpon bite has continued throughout the month.  The fishing got a little tougher though as we'd been dealing with some bad water in a few areas and it seemed to push some of the tarpon out of many of the usual haunts that we fish.  Though if you invested some time you could get lucky and find a few in some of those areas, plus a few local fish in some of the nearby channels.  This last week we had a few days we caught some big tarpon, one day we hooked a couple that we lost, and one day we didn't have a bite.  But today was stellar fishing we made a long run and my angler Irv was OK going all in for a shot at glory.  Irv was a former customer and friend of Capt. Ken Cohan and had some good fish tales from fishing with Capt. Ken.  It was a gamble making a long run, it could've been a long boat ride had things not worked out, but luckily they did for us.  We found a good load of big tarpon, jumping and splashing all over off the shorelines of some of the everglades beaches.  We landed three fish up to 150 lbs or so, all very large!  We also found a few tripletail off shore before it got too rough.  Capt. Mike Bassett had some good fishing on the patches yesterday with some hogfish and cero mackerel, and found some trout in the bay.  Today he had some trout, snappers, and got a cobia as well.  Capt. Jim Willcox has been geting into some bonefish on the very windy days in the middle of the month.  He had one day with some good smaller fish on jigs and shrimp fishing the muds.  He also had a nice size snook yesterday he caught in the backcountry too.  Capt. Bill Bassett had some good mackerels the other day as well as a few tripletail.  Capt. Tim Arce had his limit of lane snappers, triple tails, and mackerels yesterday too.  Capt. Mike Venezia had a big sawfish and big hammerhead the last couple days he fished in the channels for big critters.  Capt.  John Johansen has had some shark and tarpon actoin in the backcountry.  Capt. Skip Nielsen has some smaller tarpon on the fly with his anglers, and got into some good size mangrove snappers for dinner.  Looks like we have a couple very nice days coming up here before a mild cold front over the weekend.  The front will likely mix the fishing up a little bit but I think it'll be a good thing overall... it's been way to hot to early for us.  I think it may also help clean up some of the nasty water we've been dealing with in some areas.  But I think March will be a good month for tarpon it seems we are having a very early season this year!

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