Winners of the Ladies Dolphin Tournament
Comments Off Way to go Brian cone and team Contagious. 1st place in the Islamorada Ladies Dolphin Tournament. this monster weighed in at 49.7 pounds and was caught by Stacy Szmanski.
Category: Fishing Reports
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Dolphin Fishing in Islamorada
Comments Off Let me introduce you to 8 yr old Josh Downtain from Raleigh North Carolina, and his grandfather Doug Davis of Johnson City Tennessee. Josh has become an avid fisherman with the help of his grandfather. He went offshore twice in the past week on our 47’ Hatteras The Islamorada lady II and caught 10 Mahi Mahi all by himself. He is pictured above with the largest of the catch. That alone would be a great trip for me but that’s not all.On Thursday he went tarpon fishing with Captain Chris King on his 21’ mako. Josh caught nurse sharks, and a tarpon bigger than he is!!!!Josh and his grandfather fish together often and he has caught redfish, brook trout, and red and black drum. He said the favorite thing about fishing in the Florida Keys is “seeing all the really big fish”. His favorite fishing of the trip was going offshore.
May Florida Keys Fishing Report and Predictions
Comments Off Wow! Are the yellowtails ever here! Mainly at night, but the bite is out of this world! In the patch reefs we are catching them up to a pound and a half, but out on the wrecks we are getting them up to 4 pounds on a consistent basis. And to make matters even better underneath the tails on the bottom are lane snappers, muttons and porgies. Don’t worry too much about the bait for the tails. It’s more about the tackle you fish with. You want a spinning rod with 10 to 20 pound test MONO on it and a small jig from 1/32 ounce to 1/8th ounce. That’s it, you don’t need anything more or less than that.
The mutton bite is on too. On a recent private charter we came up with 9 muttons up to 16 pounds. We fished nothing but deep wrecks with fresh and live bait.
Groupers have been a bit slow. Now that the water is warming up they are getting pretty hard to come by.
The hot scene offshore is dolphin. They are biting like crazy everywhere outside of 300 feet of water. I haven’t seen the Islamorada Lady come in with a catch that was anything less than awesome in weeks! They have mainly been catching dolphin, but tunas and wahoos have made their way into the box also.
Tarpon is also red hot. The charter boats out of Robbie’s are getting them on a nightly basis.
As for predictions, I would expect to see the tails and muttons bite like crazy for the next couple months. The mangroves will start really chewing at night after the full moon in June and July, while the dolphin will remain hot until late August. If you are coming to fish the Capt. Michael party boat make sure you bring your light spinning gear for the yellowtails!
Islamorada Offshore Fishing Report
Comments Off Offshore fishing for Dolphin, Tuna, Wahoo, etc., is in full swing! Calm waters have allowed us to search for birds, debris and weed lines most effectively. Our 47″ Hatteras, “The Islamorada Lady II” managed to bag over 30 gaffers yesterday. For the past month, all of our offshore boats on the dock have managed to bring in at least 20-30 Mahi Mahi.
The charter boat, “Blue Heaven” released a Sailfish on their last trip and 2 Wahoos on the trip prior. If tuna is more your taste, the guys can bring you to one of the humps. There you will encounter 20-30 lb Black fins.
Florida Keys Fishing
Party Boat Fishing in the Florida Keys
Comments Off Party boat fishing is going well again too! During the day trips we are able to keep all the legal groupers we have had to let go in during the closed season. Keeper Yellowtails, and nice Big Eyes have been keeping anglers busy.
The night bite has been excellent with 2-3 lbs Yellowtails on the mid-depth wrecks, every night trips produce some nice Muttons and the night before last a beautiful Cubera Snapper. Mangroves have also been showing up on the patches.
Warm Waters Perfect for Fishing in Islamorada
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Summer is approaching and the water temperature is rising. As the water warms up more and more snappers are being found on the reef. The Mangrove Snapper are getting ready to spawn and the Yellowtail Snapper are swarming in full force.
Grouper season has opened at the begining of the month and the bite is on. This year is a contrast to last years May in which the grouper seemed to know our season and get a case of “lock jaw” on May 1st.
You can be confident that as the water temperature rises the reef will continue to produce nice catches and the Mutton will follow suite to the Mangroves and the Yellowtails that will add to our daily bad limit of snapper.
October Fishing Report from Islamorada
Comments Off After an amazingly good September this month has gotten off to a bit of a slow start. Last month we were catching tons of nice mangrove snappers with some muttons and groupers spread in the mix. Most of them were coming on live ballyhoo fished on the bottom. At the same time as these nice bottom fish we were also catching lots of yellowtails. Really the event that seemed to be the switch that turned this hot bite off was the last tropical storm that passed by. The rains that fell for two days straight cooled the water off very quickly and the winds that blew made the water very, very dirty. For a week it has almost looked like green mud.
Now that we are over a week past the storm we are seeing the fish come back, but it’s not still where it should be. The bait fish, mainly ballyhoo have not returned to the reef were they are just a few weeks ago. They are slowly but surely returning, and this will bring more predators, which is what we as fisherman want.
The hottest bite out there right now is the yellowtails after dark. Our night trips have been producing some extraordinary catches lately. Both Capt. Dave and Capt. Ron have been targeting the wrecks off the edge of the reef and catching nice “flag” yellowtails one after another. Last week I think they limited out 4 nights out of the 5 they fished. A few random mutton snappers also came off the wrecks, but the big highlight is really the ‘tails.
The sailfish are just starting to show up on the reef again. They will be here all winter long and will make thousands of anglers very, very happy this year. We catch a hand-full every year on the party boat, but the charter boats catch hundreds. Almost every day of the winter the charter boats catch at least one per boat. Sometimes you can catch 12 or 15 if you hit the right day!
I would expect the reef fishing to get better for snappers the next few weeks, the groupers are going to start moving into the reef and so are the sailfish. In other words… October is going to be an awesome month!
Capt. Brian
September Fishing Report
Comments Off This time of year is always exciting, yet frustrating at the same time. The reef fishing is still really pretty good right now, but we hardly have any customers around to enjoy it. After Labor Day the business end of the fishing dies off drastically, even though the fishing is still good. The good news about that is that if you are able to come down and fish with us there is very little competition on the party boat and few boats on the reef competing with us. A month ago you would have been one of 40 people on the boat, where-as now you are one of 12 on a typical trip.
The mangrove snapper spawn is coming to an end, but the fish are still out on the reef and hungry. We are actually catching more of them in the day time, as the night spawn areas have shut down. It’s fun to catch them in the day time because they swim right up into the chum slick and you can almost watch them eat your bait. In some ways it’s like sight fishing!
The yellowtail bite is still good both day and night. They tend to be a bit bigger at night, which is to be expected. At night both Capt. Ron and Capt. Dave are fishing wrecks in the 100 foot range and catching the big “flag” yellowtails.
We have been seeing a few muttons both day and night too. Nothing big in the daytime, but at least they are there. At night they have pulled up a few in the 10 to 12 pound range, which is a respectable fish no matter who you are. The nicest day time mutton recently was caught by Ron White who was fishing with a live ballyhoo on a long leader rig in 75 feet of water. He had the nicest fish on the boat, until his fishing parter Nancy White topped his catch with an 11 pound red grouper in 205 feet of water on the same rig. Needless to say, Ron got quite a bit of teasing the rest of the day.
As for the offshore scene, not many boats have been getting off the dock to give reports. The last day that the Islamorada Lady II fished they came in with blackfin tunas, skip-jack tunas and some deep water dwellers such as the rarely caught barrel fish. The barrels are really good to eat, but very hard to catch, making them quite an exciting catch. The one the Lady caught was about 12 pounds, yielding multiple fantastic dinners for the lucky angler.
In the near future I would expect to see the snappers continue to bight quite well due to the warm water. The groupers are going to be few and far between, as are the king fish. Basically the word of the fall is snapper, snapper, snapper.
Hope to fish with you soon,
Capt. Brian
Mangrove Fishing in Islamorada
Comments Off First off I would like to mention that we have NO OIL IN THE KEYS from the BP oil spill. We are fishing, boating, snorkeling, swimming and beach-going as usual.
Now for the fishing report:
Good news and bad news: The good news is that the mangrove snapper fishing is about as good as it can ever get in the daytime. The bad news is that if you wait 3 weeks it will slow down and you won’t catch as many fish. The night bite, on the other hand is still warming up. I would guess that the fish have about another week before they are in full swing for the night bite.
In the daytime we are fishing patch reefs no deeper than 25 feet and slaying the mangroves (grovers)!!!! They are swimming right up to the surface and most of them you can watch eat the bait. Not that you could use one on the Capt. Michael, but you could easily target these fish with a fly rod if you wanted to! If you are interested in something as unusual as snapper fishing with a fly rod just call the ticket booth at 305-664-8070 and set up a trip with me on the Satisfaction. I will make it happen! Not too many people can say they ever caught a snapper in fly!
As for the yellowtails they are biting their butts off too, but I haven’t been targeting them as much as the mangroves for a few reasons… A: mangroves are easier to catch, B: grovers are better eating, C: grovers fight better and lastly you can catch mangroves all the way around the boat instead of only on the back which makes it more fun for more people.
We are catching lots of short groupers, but I don’t think we have filleted one in a week or so. That’s pretty typical of the summer time. Snappers are on and groupers are off. The last sizable grouper was about a 15 pound black off a wreck in 95 feet on a night trip during the full moon. About the only time groupers really bite at night for us is during the full moon.
As for the offshore scene, the Islamorada Lady II has been slaying the dolphin (mahi-mahi)! Schoolies, gaffers and slammers, they are getting all of them! With Capt. Jeff temporarily helping the government search for oil in our waters (there is none!!!!) we had Capt. Carlos Jimenez take the helm and he did a fantastic job. Capt. Jeff is back now and the dolphin are stacking up on the fillet table. Tunas are biting too, as well as the occasional wahoo.
The night bite for yellowtails and mangroves will stay hot for another two months, with the next 4 weeks or so being the best. If you want to fish the party boat for $40 just call 305-664-8070. If you prefer a private trip on a charter boat for the same fish with less people on board it’s the same number, just tell the booking agent you would like a night snapper trip and they will point in the right direction.
Happy fourth to everyone out there! We look forward to fishing with you soon!!!
Capt. Brian
Yellowtail Fishing in Islamorada is On the Up!
Comments Off Wow! Are the yellowtails ever here! Mainly at night, but the bite is out of this world! In the patch reefs we are catching them up to a pound and a half, but out on the wrecks we are getting them up to 4 pounds on a consistent basis. And to make matters even better underneath the tails on the bottom are lane snappers, muttons and porgies. Don’t worry too much about the bait for the tails. It’s more about the tackle you fish with. You want a spinning rod with 10 to 20 pound test MONO on it and a small jig from 1/32 ounce to 1/8th ounce. That’s it, you don’t need anything more or less than that.
The mutton bite is on too. A while ago I mentioned in a report that if you want to catch muttons all you have to do is get with the Robbie’s ticket booth at 305-664-8070 and they will set you up on my boat. One group of guys did just that and we did what I like to call a “nuttin’ but mutton” trip. We came up with 9 muttons up to 16 pounds. We fished nothing but deep wrecks with fresh and live bait. It was a lot of fun and we are already planning on doing the same thing again next year!
Groupers have been a bit slow. Now that the water is warming up they are getting pretty hard to come by.
The hot scene offshore is dolphin. They are biting like crazy everywhere outside of 300 feet of water. I haven’t seen the Islamorada Lady come in with a catch that was anything less than awesome in weeks! They have mainly been catching dolphin, but tunas and wahoos have made their way into the box also.
Tarpon is also red hot. The charter boats out of Robbie’s are getting them on a nightly basis.
Sometimes I feel like I sound like I relay the idea that everything is fantastic and everything is biting. I guess I tend to only talk about what you can expect to catch with us as opposed to what isn’t biting well. Well in the interest of not being misleading or a liar, here we go… the kingfish bite is absolutely horrible. If you come down just to catch kings you are probably going to be less than impressed. The sailfish bite is also pretty much non-existent. I suppose a few boats are seeing them from time to time but they are basically gone.
So that’s the report from the last week or so… As for predictions, I would expect to see the tails and muttons bite like crazy for the next couple months. The mangroves will start really chewing at night after the full moon in July, while the dolphin will remain hot until late August. If you are coming to fish the Capt. Michael party boat make sure you bring your light spinning gear for the yellowtails!
Looking forward to fishing with you soon,
Capt. Brian