3/12/11 Cold weather? No problem for these florida keys fish!

Capt. Rick Stanczyk fished today with his girlfriends brother John Baxter and company down from Tennessee.  They had a late start so instead of running all the way to the cape they fished half way back in the everglades.  Caught plenty of trout, ladyfish, jacks, and snappers, then went and put the big rods out.  Caught a nice lemon shark about 100 lbs or so, and not much else while there.  So they ran out a little further to another gulf spot and put 'em out again, and within a few minutes had this nice hammerhead shark on!  The water was pretty stirred up out there and no mackerels bit, so they ran back on the edge of some banks and caught some nice mangrove snappers and this nice red grouper as well!  Great action for a fairly chilly day in the middle of March!  Soon there will be great florida tarpon fishing again so be ready!

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!

3/7/11 Silver Kings plus a silver trout!

Capt. Rick Stanczyk fished Jim & Gwen Johnson today on 3/7/11 for a great day fishing in Islamorada!  They fished with Rick last winter when it was very cold so thought they'd give it a try in the spring when it was warmer!!!  They ran 18 or so miles into the everglades national park and fished some channels back there, catching plenty of trout, ladyfish, jacks, and of course catfish!  Good action pretty much non-stop!  They stayed in the same area and put the big rods out for some bigger stuff.  They caught plenty of sharks for the rest of the afternoon, mostly black tips and a couple lunker nurse sharks!  They also caught 2 out of 3 tarpon which was a delight and Jim's dream to catch!  Gwen got to catch one as well so that made it even better!  One fish was close to 100 lbs and the other was 65-75 lbs!  While fishing for these we caught plenty more ladyfish and also this unusual silver trout with no spots!  Great action and fun while florida tarpon fishing!!!

Capt. Rick Stanczyk
305-747-6903
rick@seethefloridakeys.net

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!

3/3/11 Windy day backcountry fishing, but good florida keys fishing action!

Well it was HOWLING today, reports of 33mph sustained winds out of the east - very nasty!  Though the backcountry wasn't too bad if you rode along the edges of the banks and fished the runoff channels and such where you were protected.  That's what Capt. Rick Stanczyk did, he had Dan Memory out for his first islamorada fishing trip.  They started off catching some whopper trout, some over 20 inches, which were very nice as there hadn't been many big ones around.  We also caught a handful of redfish, ladyfish, and an unusual flounder.  We then put the big rods out which was tough as there were 3 footers in the main channel where we shark/tarpon fish with the tide going right into the wind!  We gave it a try and ended up getting a few shark bites which bit us off, so we put the wire on and ended up catching a few blacktips which were very cool and acrobatic!  We had two big 'mud marlin' on again as well, one slashed through the leader pretty quickly as he made his way directly out into the gulf - which was likely for the best as it was very rough out there!  The other we fought for about 45 minutes and he stayed in the channel hugged to the bottom, though it was tough to pull on the leader myself and drive the boat at the same time with the howling winds, we finally got him tired and coming up a little when he started slashing around on the bottom and knicked the wind-on leader above the wire.  But very tough battle, Dan said it was like trying to pull up a small car!