3/15/11 Fishing the everglades! And fishing Islamorada!

Capt. Jim Willcox fished a full day in the everglades today and had another good day catching a few nice snook.  They also caught plenty of redfish, trout, ladyfish, and some big black drum.  Hopefully this is a sign the snook fishing will be picking up for the rest of the year!  Capt. Rick Stanczyk fished two half days today, there was a big mud close to home with plenty of trout, ladyfish, jacks, and some sharks in it.  Also fished for some tarpon nearby at the end of the day, saw quite a few rolling around but no bites.  Every guide at Bud n' Mary's is booked tomorrow, so hopefully there will be plenty of good fish stories to tell!!!

3/14/11 Florida Keys Snook Fishing plus other stuff!

Capt. Jim Willcox fished a full day in the back today and caught this nice snook drifting in a channel in the back.  He has caught a few this week which is a very good sign as they were severely decimated last year during the cold winter.  They also caught this baby permit which is pretty neat looking!  Plus some blacktip sharks and the usual ladyfish, trout, jacks, etc...  Weather is warming up here so islamorada fishing charters should be getting more productive!!!

3/10/11 Cold front coming means... great fishing!

Capt. Jim Willcox and Capt. Rick Stanczyk fished a 3/4 day this morning due to the cold front coming today.  The sky turned black and winds were extremely nasty by 12:30 or so.  We had our british group from the UK down and a couple of the guys fancied catching a bonefish, and with the front coming in that was ideal conditions to try some stake up fishing.  Capt. Jim put them on 3 bones this morning, here's a picture of a nice 7 lber!  Part of Capt. Rick's crew wanted to catch a tarpon in a bad way so we ran back into the everglades for that.  Fishing was very good early, caught 1 out of 3 tarpon bites we had, possibly 4, plus a few blacktip sharks and a big nurse shark!  We also caught plenty of trout, ladyfish, jacks while doing so and a few pompano too!

3/6/11 Shark fishing in florida! Plus a strange surprise!

Capt. Rick Stanczyk and Capt. Jim Willcox had a group of british regulars, Bill Chisolm and party, out for some backcountry fishing today.  This was the 1st of 5 days fishing and staying at Bud n' Mary's!  We left out and headed to the backcountry early this morning for some islamorada fishing.  We stopped in some channels and caught plenty of trout, ladyfish, jacks, and pompano.  Capt. Rick caught a blacktip and this big lemon shark in there as well, plus had another shark bite through the leader.  We saw a handful of tarpon rolling around in there but no bites out of them.  Later on both Capt. Jim & Rick fished together trying to catch the boys a tarpon but no luck, though we did each hook big lunker 'mud marlin' at the same time!  Bills was so big he thrased under the boat and broke the rod on us and slashed through the leader, and Jims got off too unfortunately, but they are usually to big to handle on the standard tarpon gear!  Jim also had this big eagle ray actually eat a tarpon bait and they ended up catching it!  We ended up catching a couple other sharks, and some more trout while we were waiting, so a day with some good action!

3/4/11 Florida Tarpon Fishing in Islamorada Florida Keys!

Capt Jim Willcox fished with Richard Alt yesterday and caught this 125 lb tarpon & 5 blacktips around 100 lbstotaled over 600 lbs of fish for Mr. Alt.  The tarpon are starting to get a little more consistent hopefully when this wind lays down it will be game on!!!  Florida Tarpon Fishing will be the main focus of the backcountry here very soon!