09 Jan January 2010 Florida Keys Fishing Report

Happy New Year fisherman,

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