Happy New Year everyone! January is here and it’s officially the start of a new decade, wow!  It hasn’t felt much like January though we haven’t had much cold weather at all, and from the looks of it at least in the immediate future it’s going to be staying warm.  We did have a few mild fronts late last year, and just a few days ago it finally dipped to around 60 for a couple nights but now the winds are kicking southeast and it’s getting back into the 80s.  I’m sure that sounds great to many folks coming from up north and is hard to complain about, but from a fishing perspective many of us love those cold weather days here fishing as they present some unique angling opportunities in the backcountry and a lot of large fish show up in the creeks and canals then.  But there are still plenty of fish to catch none the less.  LI was out of town for a week or so but we had great fishing over christmas week with a lot of snook, redfish,  and drum in the everglades.  Also a good spanish mackerel bite in the gulf with some tripletail starting to show up well out there and the occasional cobia on various wrecks.  There have been some around town and backcountry tarpon still too with the warmer weather patterns.  Capt. Charles Hertel and Capt. Mike Still had some local tarpon action recently fishing the nearby bridges.  Capt. Jim Willcox has some small juvenile tarpon going in the everglades as well.  Capt. John Johansen has been on a solid mangrove snapper bite around the islands.  Capt. Perry Scuderi had some good patch reef fishing as of late too.  I got out with my dad a couple days ago and we caught some very nice fish.  We were fishing for trophies not numbers, and the first couple hours we didn’t catch a thing!  But when the tide stage got later and things warmed up a hair, our luck changed and we ended up getting a trophy cobia, a couple monster snook, a big redfish & black drum, and a few other specimens.  Sometimes those big boys you have to really put the time in to have a shot at getting just one fish, but for guys like us it’s worth it.  I made a couple YouTube videos as well showing the cobia and one of the big snook being landed.  Check ’em out and make sure to like & subscribe!  Also please call the marina for booking and lodging info at 305-664-2461!

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