7/13/11 Night tarpon fishing and florida keys backcountry fishing!

Capt. Rick Stanczyk fished with Graeme and his father over from Scotland last night and today. They wanted to catch some big stuff for their florida keys fishing charter trip.  We went out late yesterday afternoon in search of tarpon.  With the in tide and most of the migrating fish gone from the local areas we usually night fish at it looked like it may be tough.  We caught some stuff for bait and brouht some crabs and gave it our best shot.  We had two tarpon bites early and caught one fish that was roughly 60 lbs and had another jump and spit the bait!  We also caught some nice lemon sharks and had a couple others bite us off.  When it started getting closer to dark we began drifting with our crabs.  Jumped another tarpon on our 2nd drift close to dark.  It was a pretty night almost full moon, and on our last drift Grame hooked one about 90 lbs that gave him a good 30 minute battle before we went in!  Very pretty to see a tarpon jumping in the bright moon light!  We fished a full day in the everglades today, it was brutally hot but fishing was decent.  We caught our limit of trout, some snappers and a few ladyfish.  We caught one tarpon in one of the channels way in the back plus a few blacktip sharks.  We moved to another area and caught a few more sharks, including a big 200 lb lemon shark!  We also caught a triple tail on a GULP shrimp, after casting to him several times with no response we finally hit him on the head with it and he GULPED it!

5/11/11 Backcountry tarpon fishing Islamorada

Capt. Rick Stanczyk had Guillaume and his mother Christiane from Quebec out for some florida keys fishing today on 5/11/11!  We left the dock early, they were short on the shrimp delivery so we used some berkley gulps!  We caught several nice big trout, some ladyfish, and some snappers for dinner.  When the tide quit we ran inside around one of the islands and caught one nice redfish, had a couple other bites we missed.  Before the water got too low to get out, we jumped out and set up for some sharks and tarpon.  Caught a few blacktips, and had a few jump and bend out our wire!  Very exciting!  We also had one tarpon bite we missed, and about 20 minutes later, hooked about a 60 lber we caught!  Got him leadered to the boat, but when we tried to get our picture he came unhooked unfortunately.  Anyways a good day backcountry fishing in Islamorada.  Capt. John Johansen also had a nice catch of tripletails from out on the edge of the gulf, and Capt. Dave Sisung reported a good tarpon bite close to home, catching two and having a couple others chase the mullets on top.  Capt. Skip Nielsen also reported catching a huge 300 lb goliath grouper in one of the channels in the backcountry!  On the ocean side, Capt. Nick Stanczyk had a 200+ lb swordfish today offshore as well, I'm sure there will be pictures to come!