The Mahi fishing has been slow for the last few days in Islamorada, but there have been some nice Permit caught on wrecks in the 20 to 30 lb range. There have still been some good Sailfishing this week and we have been catching some nice Blackfin Tunas on the Islamorada hump.There is also some nice Amberjacks on the 409 and Islamorada Humps.Live Blue Runners are great bait for these great fighting fish that been ranging from 30 to 80 lbs.On the reef the Yellowtail fishing has been good with fish on the patches and in the 90 foot range.Inshorhe Tarpon have been showing up in better numbers each day with a lot of good action in the earlyevening hours.Live Crabs or Mullet are the best baits for these fish.

– Capt. Glenn Sharp

Well, we got our first blast of real cold this week, but it will warm right back up. Fishing in the backcountry has been great! So good that it is hard to say were to begin. Let's start in the Gulf and work our way east.  

The Gulf west of Sprigger back have been producing lots of Spanish Mackerel, fast action and it is easy to catch 50- 60 fish in a trip. Mixed with the Macks are Bluefish, Jacks, large Lady Fish and Pompano. If youare fishing over holes or any structure you can count on Mangrove Snapper too. Nice Big Tripletails have been my main attraction though, the banks are holding lots of them and there are some real big fish out there, some over 10 lbs. They fight great with great tail walks out of the water. The real bonus is that they are delicious as well.

Moving with the schools of Mackerel are Black Tip Sharks. They are a lot of fun, a real sporty fish to catch. They attack the surface bait with ferocity and the strike is always violent, once hooked they make fast, sustained runs and will often jump. 

Into the channels between the banks, I have been catching lots of nice Mangrove Snapper and Large Lemon Sharks. The Pompano are starting to show there as well and the trick to getting them is to have someone watch the wake of your boat as you run, the fish will skip out of the water when you run over a school. Just come back around with a Pompano jig tipped with shrimp.

The Party Boat fishing has been great on the Capt. Michael. I know all of this great fishing sound too good to be true but it is all really happening. The party boat is slamming big "flag" Yellowtail at night, Capt. Tony had two nights last week when conditions were perfect and he caught over 150 lbs of the big boys!

Capt. Dave has been finding some big large Muttons during the day and lots of Porgies and Lane Snapper. So really if you are not here you are in the wrong place.

I hope everyone had a great holiday season and a safe and fun New Years.   The weather over the Christmas break couldn't have been any better here in the Florida Keys.   All the nice weather meant there were

a lot of fishermen on the water. Typically the sailfish season is in full swing, but with the lack of true cold fronts we haven't had a good push of sailfish in our waters in a couple of weeks. But, I think that's gonna change with the cold front we are having today. The weatherman says the wind is going to be 30 mph out of the north dropping the temperatures into the 50 s, making it the first real cold front of the year.   Hopefully it will push a bunch of sailfish down the Florida coast.

With all the warm temperatures as of late the dolphin fishing remained strong throughout December and looks like it will continue into January surprisingly. 

Yesterday we caught 20 Mahi up to 12 lbs. The white seagulls and terns have been helping us find feeding fish in the morning hours of the day. The best depth has been 150 to 300 ft of water.   There has also been a good number of blackfin tuna along with some sailfish under the birds as well. So you need to keep every set of working birds honest. You just don't know what they may be working over.

This time of year is also prime time for wahoo.   Usually the calmer the weather the better it is to target these zebra fish.   The trick to catching wahoo is to high speed troll or to use live cigar minnows, blue runners, or speedos. It is also important to find some clean blue Gulf Stream water, because these predator fish are a pelagic fish that like clean water to help them hunt.

Well I hope this gets you excited and gets you to go out and try your luck at catching some fish. I also want to thank Shannon Attales for having such a great barbeque for the Blessing of the Fleet on New Year's Day.

Tight lines and Happy New Year!

Captain Brian Cone 

I'm not sure that the winter weather has arrived in the Florida Keys yet. I do know that there has been an 80 percent chance of showers lately, and I'm not talking about rain!  The schools of ballyhoo have arrived on the reef, as they usually do this time of year.  This means that the sailfish, cero mackerel, and dolphin are feeding on these huge schools.  Most of the ballyhoo showers have frigate birds feeding on them.  The ballyhoo try to skip away from the attacking predator fish, which makes it easy prey for the frigate birds. Therefore, the most important bait to have this time of year is… you guessed it, a BALLYHOO!   It is not uncommon to get up to 10 shots at sailfish in a day running showers when the conditions are good.  The best ballyhoo showers days are typically on a good, sunny day with winds less than ten knots and clean water on the reef line.

If you're not interested in sailfish along the reef, the snapper and grouper fishing have remained strong, as long as you can keep them away from the sharks.  There is still a month left until grouper season closes.  We've been getting most of our fish on a variety of live baits like grunts, pinfish, and speedos.  A few mutton snapper have been spotted on the reef, but not as many as last month.  The deeper wrecks have been producing more mutton snapper, while using live ballyhoo for bait.

Surprisingly, there has been an abundance of dolphin this fall.  On Thanksgiving morning, we went out on a half day trip and caught 40 nice dolphin up to 20 pounds.  The fish were caught from the reef line out to the gulf stream current edge around 400 feet.  The key to finding the dolphin is locating the working birds or weed edges.  There have been quite a few big dolphin found on showering ballyhoo or on pieces of debris. 

The humps are still producing nice tuna as long as you have a good supply of bait to chum them up.  Today we loaded our wells with pilchards and ran off to the marathon hump.  We knew it was going to be fun when we chummed the first couple of freebies and the blackfin tuna were busting on them immediately.  Within a couple of hours we had a box full of tuna up to 25 lbs.  And yes, the sharks were bad. I think we might have hooked three times as many tunas as we caught!  We actually had a shark chase a tuna to the boat, and it ended up biting the propeller and shutting the engine off. Pretty crazy!!!!

I'm looking forward to this December's sailfish season, nice wahoo, and all the other winter time fish. 

I hope everyone has a great holiday season.  Come spend a day or two on the water and enjoy what the Florida Keys has to offer.

Tight lines and Happy Holidays

Capt. Brian Cone

The ballyhoo have been schooling in big numbers along the outer reef especially due to the chilly north winds.   So you know what  that means, sailfish and nice dolphin showering these baits up and down the reef line.  The frigate birds and albatross will help tip off the feeding fish.   A run and gun technique is usually the best method.  We like to fish just one or two rods while we wait for the next shower to happen.  The faster you get to the shower,  the better chance you have of baiting a sailfish or dolphin before he or she has had their fill of ballyhoo. 

If the conditions aren't promising for the sailfish or dolphin, we've been anchoring down along the deep reef or on some wrecks targeting nice bottom fish.   The bait of choice has been a live ballyhoo or pilchard for the mutton snappers.  There has also been a nice bite of grouper. The key to successful grouper fishing is winning the battle in the first 3 seconds. We've had several days in the last few weeks where we have gotten our limit of nice grouper.  Most of the fish have come on a variety of live baits, with a good amount coming on large bait plugs. We have also been catching a nice amount of yellowtail snapper while waiting for the bottom fish to bite.

The pilchards have still been fairly easy to get in large numbers during the calm days, making the trips to the humps productive for chumming up the nice blackfin tuna.  Just two days ago we went to the marathon hump with three live baitwells full of pilchards.  In less than an hour, we had our fish box full to the top with nice twenty pound tuna.  To make the day even better, on the way back in we came across a nice current edge with scattered sargasum weed.  I knew it would only be a matter of time before we trolled up some dolphin.   In less than five minutes we had a double header on with another 50 plus dolphin ready to play at the transom of the Contagious.   I don't think I can remember such a great bite of dolphin in November. 

Hurry up and get out and try your luck fishing this month.  It's one of the best months in the Islamorada area for catching a variety of fish.

Tight Lines

If you haven't gone to Live bait fish the humps with us for blackfin tuna you are missing out.  On every trip this fall we've loaded the boat with tuna.  Just yesterday we had 6 on at a time and managed to catch 20 beautiful blackfin and some fat skipjack tuna as well. With two live wells full of pilchards it was GAME ON !!!!  The Tuna were in suc h a frenzy at the back of the boat it wouldn't take two seconds to get a bite.  After getting our fill of tuna we went in search of dolphin.  And it didn't take long to find 5 nice gaffers under a frigate bird. We also found a nice piece of bamboo floating. It truly was a magical piece of debris. We managed to get some wahoo more dolphin and a huge tripletail.

I can honestly say this has been the best August and September I can ever remember for dolphin.  Just three days ago I found a school of over 1000 dolphin from 10 to 20 lbs. It was like the TV show Blue Planet.  There must have been over 50 frigate birds and brown boobies working the school.  It was quite a site.

It Looks like the Fall Tuna fishing on the humps is going to be just as good as it has been in the last few years.  WE like to catch these tuna on 12lb spinning rods, making it an absolute blast.  We can even catch them on fly rods when they are in a frenzy.

The Bottom fishing remains strong as well even though I haven't done much of it.  I can honestly say I've only gone bottom fishing one day in the last month, but it was outstanding. We filled the box with nice snappers up to 12 lbs and some nice porgies and amberjacks.

To book the trip of a lifetime with Captain Brain Cone on the Contagious give us a call at 305-664-8070.
 

This is also a great time to fish the party boat. After the full moon in September the Mutton snapper start their spawning and several should be caught on every trip. Nat Gross a Saturday night regular caught a beautiful 7 pounder last week. The daily snapper bite remains strong and with the kings starting to show up we are sure to have some very productive trips. Call for reservations and don't forget that we will discount your second trip of the day to $25.