13 Jun June Fishing in the Florida Keys

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 Yellowtail Snappermore 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 night charter 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 would love to schedule a trip like that for you!

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.

So that’s the report from the last week or so… As for predictions, I would expect to see the tails and muttons to 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!