Florida Keys Fishing Update

Islamorada Fishing Report – February 15, 2011

Things have been fair down here in Islamorada as we have had tough conditions over the last two weeks. First we had about four days of Portuguese Man of War invading our waters, and not just hundreds but THOUSANDS. They were so bad we almost could not fish!  In all my years I’ve never seen anything like it.  One day I had to run 20 miles up the reef in hopes to find a clear spot to fish; nutzzzz!!  Along with this we have little to no current which makes things even more difficult, so we had to work just that much harder to be productive.  On the bright side the weather has been very nice, sunny and plenty warm.

In the midst of all this the water turned green on us and the King Mackerals have taken a little break.  There were, however, a few real nice ones caught ranging up to 40 pounds. The smaller Kings have been spread out along the reef edge and not really biting all that well, but we have managed to put together a decent catch of them by the end of the day.  The most reliable bite for us has been the Snappers.  Both the Yellow tails and some real nice Mangrove have kept the anglers busy.  The Groupers won’t leave us alone!  At times we just had to stop putting bait down on the bottom as it has been that good.  Oh well, just a couple of more months.  Because the water turned green on us it’s been much harder to locate the Cobias, however, they were still found a few times.

We had a nice current edge this week; blue to green which produced some nice Dolphin and we even jigged a nice Wahoo one day on a small piece of debris.  There have also been some small Blackfin Tunas around.  We managed four or five 20 pounders one day and a few guys have tried their luck offshore at the humps.  It’s been hit or miss with no real consistency yet; soon though.  The Sail fishing has been slow; I believe they might have turned around due to the lack of conditions for them.  However, we did get a nice Cold front over the weekend which helped perk the edge back up and the Sails started to bite a lot better on Saturday and Sunday, as well as the King Macks.

The  Captains have told me the Trout and Redfish are still plentiful in the Back country, as well as a great Pompano bite, which are very delicious to eat.  The Cold front kind of put a damper on things over the weekend as the water dropped back into the 50’s, so the guys had to resort to more bridge and shallow water patch fishing.  This did prove to be productive with plenty of short Red Groupers and a good catch of Mangrove Snappers.

Captain John Oughton
prettyworkcharters@gmail.com
1-855-GOT-BAIT

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