25 May Yellowtail Fishing in Islamorada is On the Up!
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