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!

3/4/11 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!

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!

3/1/11 Florida Tarpon Fishing, sharks, mackerels, snappers, and more!

Capt. Rick Stanczyk fished two half days on this first day of March, and had a great day to ring in the new month and start of spring!  This morning he fished Bob and Sue, who stayed the night at Bud n' Mary's and fished the day before in the backcountry, catching plenty of redfish, trout, and ladyfish.  They wanted to try something different so we took them out on the edge of the gulf.  Caught some mackerels, bigger ladyfish, and blue runners.  Also caught them 3 nice size blacktip sharks.  Caught a tide change in the middle, though the end of the fall and beginning of the rise was good fishing!  This afternoon Rick took Brent and his son-in-law kyle out for some florida keys fishing for dinner and caught them their limit of nice mangrove snappers!  They also caught a handful of mackerel, blue runners, and groupers too.  They wanted to catch a shark, so we went to one of the edges of the banks where the current was running pretty good and put out the few chunks of mackerel we had.  While rigging the 2nd rod up, the first conventional started going click-click-click-click!  Rick handed the rod to Brent, and said "lock it up in 10 seconds" figuring it was a shark.  All of a sudden - BOOM - big splash behind the boat and a nice 60 lb tarpon!  We caught him in about 15 minutes and got a nice picture of him and released him unharmed. We also caught a nice blacktip again after that for Kyle.  Great way to end a day of fabulous fishing in islamorada with a nice florida keys tarpon!!!  Capt. Jim Willcox also reported good fishign in the backcountry, trout, ladyfish, snappers, sharks, and caught another big 'mud marlin' as well!  Capt. Perry Scuderi also reported good action around the bridges for mackerel, ladyfish, bluefish, and caught a big 250+ lb goliath grouper in the channels near the bridges!

Capt. Rick Stanczyk
305-747-6903
rick@seethefloridakeys.net
http://www.budnmarys.com