Report by Tim Hand
It was awesome to fish today with Capt. John Oughton from J & A Charters on his boat the That’s Right which Charters out of Islamorada in the Florida Keys. Capt John runs a top notch charter boat experience, joining us today as crew where Jeff and Andrew. Fishermen included Kelly and Mike from Atlanta, Capt. Johny’s father in law Wayne, SportFishermen.com’s Admin John and myself.
Fishing the Florida Keys with Capt. Oughton and his crew is a complete pleasure. Variety is the spice of life and variety is what you can expect to find with J&A Charters. By the end of our short day, yes we did a nice 5 hour trip we had an impressive tally of Kings with many more released on purpose or “Long Line Released” Triples doubles and quads were exciting, a dozen or so of tasty yellowtail snapper with a handful released also. One Mutton snapper, 2 groupers released, one very big pretty blue parrot fish, a variety of grunts, a remora just a really nice mixed bag with all of us thinking the same thing “Man our kids would be having a blast” as the action was non stop. Every thing was caught on light tackle, 10 and 12lb test so the tackle was matched well to the species.
Our Day on the That’s Right began as they say in the Florida Keys Making Bait.
Captain John dialed in and we rolled in to the patch reefs, dropped the chum and sand a couple sabiki caught fish and the next thing we see is Andrew perched with the net. Two perfect tosses and we were gone leaving the fleet to pick away as we were on our way to fish the Kingfish grounds.
All of the action you can see on the pictures below took part maybe in a hour and a half window. Capt John gets you to the fish, than you can have your fun and when your done their its off to something else for more variety. This is the perfect scenario for kid and fun family fishing. All of us whom have kids said the same thing wish the kids where here for this they would have a ball.
Once we made short work of the awesome King Mackerel bite it was off for some snapper and bottom fishing for the tasty yellowtails that inhabit the patch reefs.
We put a great dinner together with a haul of yellowtails, a mutton snapper, 2 grouper released a beauty of a blue parrotfish and many grunts and other species to put a bend in the rod.