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Hooking Up Anglers Since 2011.
March is here and it's been busy around town again thankfully! Many guides have been fishing just about every day. Though we've had some crazy winter weather as they've been getting all up and down the east coast. February was ridiculously warm with 80 degree temperatures every day, but March we've had several fronts in a row and some severe ones at that dropping temps down into the mid 50s several different times. This has of course slowed the spring tarpon bite down some after it was pretty good in February. But this isn't uncommon in the early part of the spring season where these late cold fronts can happen. But hopefully for the latter part of march that will be over with and I think in the long run it will be a good thing for the tarpon fishing later in the season as if its super warm super early, sometimes the fish just push right on through early on, so this will hopefully have held some up for a few weeks anyways. We've still had good fishing despite the cold but have had to mix things up a little bit. I had some decent cold weather everglades fishing last week, catching a small tarpon each day, a handful of snook, a few black drums, and a good amount of trout each day. Not a red hot bite but was able to pick away and catch a few quality ones. Though this previous week we had a very tough day back there not catching much at all, but luckily we bailed and caught some fish out front on the patch reefs for the last couple hours. The patch reefs have also been good to me this week we had a good mix of hogfish, porgy, yellow jacks, various snappers, groupers, and got a permit on two different day trips. On the handful of nice days I've had some luck with the big tarpon, but fishing really hasn't been red hot for them often it's been a good solid bite or two maybe, but as we get more into April it usually turns on more. Capt. Bill Bassett has been going deep in the everglades in his canoe and finding good amount of snook and little tarpon. Capt. Jim Willcox had some good fishing last week with some bonefish, and a few drum, snook, and little tarpon on one day this week. Yesterday he caught some snappers around the islands and got a big bull shark in the local channels. There had been several big bull sharks caught locally as well as a few hammerheads before the major cold fronts, was unusual to see those big sharks in many of the local channels, some were over 300 lbs! Capt. Mike Bassett had some good spanish mackerel action in the gulf yesterday despite the high winds. Capt. Skip Nielsen has had good patch reef fishing with various snappers and some good grouper action on the bottom. Capt. Gunner Guthrie had a good patch reef day with a load of lane snappers, hogfish, and a permit on last sunday when it was flat calm. Capt. Tim Arce I know caught a permit to start his day out there today. Capt. Chris Daly and Capt. Clyde Upchurch have had some redfish mixed in with some snappers around the islands as of late. It's good to see a few redfish back around, though of course we advocate catch and release with redfish as there numbers are very low in our area right now. Capt. Mike Venezia had a good mixed bag of snook, redfish, and drum in the everglades several days ago during the cold. Anyways as you can see there has been plenty of fun things to fish for but the cold has just mixed it up a little bit. Hopefully this will be the last of it I know there is another front on the way next week but I think so far they are saying the temperatures will not drop severely so that should be good news. The weekend looks to be very nice might allow the big tarpont to spark up again. Give us a call if you want to get out fishing! 305-664-2461
Capt. Rick Stanczyk Instagram: @richardstanczyk Facebook: Islamorada Tarpon Fishing
This Fishing Report was submitted on 3/15/2018 8:56:22 AM by Seamus and last updated on 3/18/2018 8:56:22 AM.
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