6/20/11 Florida Keys Backcountry Report

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Capt. Rick Stanczyk fished all day today in the florida keys fishing with Jeff Cohen family. We ran back in the everglades and it was very nice back there, mildly overcast so not too hot and a good east southeastish breeze. We drifted in some of the bays back there where the water looked nice and dirty and the trout bite was ON! We caught our limit of nice ones up to over 20 inches, plus released a lot more. Also caught some ladyfish and snappers too. This was nice too see as the trout bites been a little tough to find any numbers of decent size fish! We did this for a an hour and a half or so then set up in some channels in the back to catch big stuff. We put our time in, almost an hour into it with no bites and then a rod bent over and the line raced towards the bow of the boat. BIG 120+ lb tarpon goes airborne and jumpes over our anchorline. I spin the rod around and hand it to young Mendel and we chased after the monster! About 45 minutes later after several big jumps and hard runs, we landed the fish! We ran and set back up and had another bite within 10 minutes, about a 100 lb fish went airborne but threw the hook. We caught a few small sharks and then the tide slacked to almost nothing - but another rod started to take off right when the tide quit! Jeff took the rod and I pulled the anchor as we were leaving after and we chased after the fish. After 15 minutes or so we got it to the surface, nice 200+ lb lemon shark! Got him up to the boat but he freaked out and broke our mono leader. We ran back towards home to fish the last hour and had one other tarpon bite close to the marina we missed, and then headed back. Good day nice to see some big fish while florida keys tarpon fishing in the back again!

Capt. Rick Stanczyk
305-747-6903
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