Fall fishing has been great so far around Key West. We're getting some heavy winds this week and next week, but the fishing has been good if you can handle the rough conditions. The tunas have been biting well on the wrecks, both on live bait and on vertical jigs. There have been a few sailfish showing up and hopefully this weekend we will be targeting them. In the backcountry we have been targeting bonefish and the bite has been great. There have been some groups of small tarpon chasing baits around in the backcountry and they are a lot of fun on smaller gear.
Sept. 10, 2016
I got back from New Jersey this past week, I was fishing a tournament up there. We caught some nice Yellowfin Tunas up to 70lbs, but nothing big enough to put us in the money. The fishing up there was great and I had a lot of fun. Since Ive been back, I'm been mostly fishing the back country, looking for Bonefish. The Bonefish are definitely thick down here and they are eating flies real well. We have also seen a bunch of Permit around too.
August 15, 2016
Starting to slow up and do a less charters this time of year, but we have still been doing some fishing. The Cobia fishing in the Gulf has been great. There has been a bunch of small fish around, but there have been plenty of keepers too. The Mangrove Snappers bite on the reef continues to be great. The backcountry fishing has been good as well. We fished the Marquesas a few days ago and there were pods of Tarpon popping throughout Mooney Harbor. We had a few Permit and Bonefish shots as well.
July 27, 2016
Just getting back into normal chartering after the Key West Marlin Tournament. The tournament was a great time and and we wound up finishing in second place overall with a White Marlin and a Sailfish. We caught a few Mahi as well, but they did not qualify because they were small. I did one charter yesterday. We started out on the wrecks and caught a few Amberjacks and Bonitas. Then we went out and did some deep dropping with electric reels and that worked out great. We caught 1 Snowy Grouper and 3 Big Yellowedge Groupers.
July 8, 2016
We spent the last few days fly fishing on the flats. We spent a good bit of time looking for Tarpon, we had some decent shots, but no hook ups. There are still some tarpon around, but we are seeing a lot less fish then last month. Thats to be expected as we get to the end of season, but there should still be some fishing hanging around for the next month or so. We did see a lot Permit last week and we got a few of them on live crabs. I've also been doing a lot of deep dropping offshore from 500 feet to a 1000 ft. Thats been great, there has been a lot of Golden Tilefish, Blue Line Tiles, Snowy Groupers and Rose Fish. We've had a few schools of Mahis come around the boat when we've been deep dropping and we got a few of these on fly and lite spinning gear. They didn't have much size to them though.
June 21, 2016.
I have been doing a lot of fly casting the last few days with the guys from badfishTV. Over the last four days we have hooked 8 Tarpon on fly and got 3 to the boat. The Tarpon fishing has been great and we were seeing a lot of fish. We also hooked 1 Permit that broke us off, but we were focusing most of out efforts on Tarpon.
June 8, 2016
I have not fished the last couple days due to Tropical Storm Colin, but the Tarpon fishing was pretty good before that. The storm definitely through the Tarpon bite off, but it should be back on track later this week. The bite offshore had been pretty slow slow still, there had been some Mahi around, but not as good as it typically should be this year. Hopefully the storm mixed things up and brought some fish in. We had been seeing a lot of Bonefish around on the flats too and that should continue well into the fall.
May 29, 2016
I have been Tarpon fishing a lot recently and it has been great. There are a lot of fish around and most of them seem to be willing to eat. We have had a number of days where we hooked 5 or more fish. The Permit fishing on the wrecks has also been good. I've been finding them on the Gulf side as well as the Atlantic. The offshore fishing has been pretty slow for this time of year. I haven't found a lot of Mahi recently and the ones I have found do not have any size to them. The reef fishing has been pretty good, from Yellowtails to Muttons to Black Groupers.
May 16,2016
I've been fishing a lot recently and that fishing has been excellent. Ive been offshore three times this past week and we found Mahis each time, some as big as 15lbs. There has been some big Amberjacks, Blackfin Tuna, Bonitas and other species on the wrecks as well. On the reef there has been a really consistent Yellowtail bite. The tarpon bite in the backcountry has really been getting good and there have been some big fish around too.
May 1, 2016
Fishing has been great this past week. We got offshore this past week a few times and each trip we found Mahis. We found them on the troll, but the school responded really well to live baits and that is how we landed the majority of out fish. We did get into a few Mahis on the fly as well. Other than that I have been doing mostly Tarpon fishing and the bite is slowly becoming more consistent. Yesterday we finished the day 2 for 3 on them and we hooked all 3 fish in the last hour. Today is the first day of Grouper season so we're going to see if we cant find any keepers close by because we have some wind today and we can't get out to where we want to be.
April 17, 2016
We have had some really nice weather this past week and the fishing has been pretty good. We are starting to see more schools of tarpon pushing in and we are seeing them in up on the flats now too. The Tarpon bite in the harbor has still been hot and cold, but that should get more consistent as season moves forward. We had a great night tarpon bite a few nights ago way up to the east. They were blowing up schools of Mullet so we were casting large baitfish flies at them and it worked well. I fished way out in the Gulf yesterday on some wrecks. It was decent fishing, with a lot of nice size Snappers and a Goliath Grouper, but we didn't find any Cobia out there. The Sailfish bite offshore has been great and we got a lot of bites using live ballyhoo. This week might even be better for it because we are getting a good northeast wind. We are also starting to see some big Mahi showing up way offshore
April 7, 2016
The reef has been great this past week. There have been some nice size yellowtails, a few Mutton Snapper and other species around. The Permit have been showing up around the reefs and wrecks to spawn as well. The Tarpon bite slowed up earlier this week when a cold front pushed in, but the bite should be getting better over the next few days. The Sailfish have been showing up in better numbers and this a good month to fish them. Also, the wahoo bite has been pretty good offshore.
March 30, 2016
Today I fished on the center console, we looked for tarpon early, but we weren't seeing a lot. We switched gears and went out to the reef and it was great fishing out there. We caught a big Mutton Snapper and a nice Yellow Jack, along with a bunch of Yellowtail Snappers and a couple Blacktip Sharks. The flats fishing has been pretty good recently. We got a Barracuda on fly yesterday and the day before that we saw a lot of tarpon and we got 1 bite on fly, but we pulled the hook pretty quick. The offshore Tuna bite was great on Monday, we caught 12 Blackfins on a half day trip, along with Bonitas and Skip Jacks. I'm really looking forward to fishing in April.
March 19, 2016
I've been fishing a lot this past week. We have had some great weather and we have been seeing a lot of fish. The main goal for the past week has been Tarpon and Permit on fly. We have been seeing Permit everyday and we have had a number of good shots, but we cant seem to get one to take the fly. The Tarpon have been showing up in good numbers as well. We have had a lot more success with those ones on fly. The night bite for the Tarpon has been awesome.
March 4, 2016
Ive been fishing a lot in the back country recently and I'm starting to see more Tarpon showing up. There have been some light winds the last couple days and we've been getting a few bites on the fly rod, but we've been having trouble keeping them attached. They seem to be eating live baits pretty good right now though. I've also been seeing some Permit around too. The bite in the Gulf has been great, here have been some nice Snappers, Kings and Cobias.
Feb. 25, 2016
I've been fishing the last few days. This past weekend we fished offshore for Sailfish, we went after them with live baits on the kite. We only had 1 Sailfish bite, but we landed the fish. It was a big fish and look about 25 minutes to get it next to the boat. Other than that we just had some encounters with toothy fish. The last 2 days we spent in the backcountry and that has been awesome. Tuesday afternoon we we started looking for Permit, we only saw one Permit and it refused our fly. There was a lot of life on the flats though, with Barracudas, Sharks and Rays. We switched gears later in the afternoon and went to look for Tarpon. Theres been a lot of Tarpon around and when the weather has been warm enough, they have been eating. We went 0-3 on fly, jumping 2 off and 1 chaffed through the shock tippet. Its always awesome to watch those big fish slurp flies. Yesterday I went out with my buddy on his boat to look for Cobia on fly. We had a great day, catching 3 on fly and a couple on spin gear. The bull sharks were terrible and we lost a few Cobia to them, but it was still a great day. We had a cold front push in last night so we will see what that does to the fishing.
Feb. 16, 2016
We fished offshore yesterday in very calm seas. The pilchards are still really hard to come by, but we had some other live baits. We spent some time trolling with dead baits and artificials, looking for Blackfins and Sailfish, but we were only catching Bonitas. We started live baiting on a wreck, but the live baits were not that affective either. We had a few bite offs, but the Blackfins never showed up. We caught a really nice Mutton Snapper on the jig on the first drop and we hooked a few other things on the jig after that, but they either got sharked or they took us into the wreck. The Jig seemed to be working, but we just couldn't get anything past the predators.
Feb. 13, 2016
Fishing has been pretty good this past week in the Keys. There has been a good Tuna bite offshore along with a couple Sailfish and Wahoos. We went off offshore a few days ago and got a few Tuna on vertical Jigs, later on when they came up, we got them on Hogy Lures. We couldn't find pilchards anywhere so we were trolling, jigging and casting artificials. We fished the back country yesterday, we saw a lot of cudas on the flats, but we only got about an hour of fishing in before a hook found its way into my leg.
Feb. 7, 2016
We this just got done fishing the Cuda Bowl on the flat skiff. We had a poor showing in the Cuda Bowl and we didn't catch anything big enough to qualify. We wound up only fishing 1 day because of weather and we did not even got 1 full day in for us before we were chased in by rain. We did catch a Tarpon on fly when we were pre fishing the Cuda on Bowl on Thursday. It was warm on Thursday and we saw some fish rolling around so we casted at them for a while. It was good to see some Tarpon showing up already.
Feb. 3, 2016
Yesterday I had a 4 hour trip in the morning on the center console and with a strong southeast wind we ran into the Gulf to fish. We started at a shallow wreck and that was our best spot. We caught some big Snappers and a nice Red Grouper that unfortunately we had to throw back. After a while we started getting covered up with Blue Runners and small Snappers so we made a move to deeper spots. The deeper wrecks were not as productive for us, just a bunch of small fish. Earlier in the week, we had some nice weather and good fishing in the backcountry on the flat skiff. We caught a few Cudas and Jacks on fly, but there was a lot of life on the flats with some warmer weather pushing in. We saw a few Permit, but we never had a good shot at them with the fly rod. This weekend I'm fishing the Cuda Bowl, so we will be looking for big toothy critters on the flats.