1/29/13 Great florida keys backcountry fishing despite high winds!

Well the wind was howling today on 1/29/13 inshore fishing islamorada.  The southeasterly winds were warm though and not too bad riding into the backcountry anyways.  We decided to run around the corner of cape sable as that area is fairly protected on this wind.  My assumption proved right and the water was much more 'fishy looking' than around other areas we ran by.  had falling tide most of the morning, tried to jump in a creek where we had done well several days ago, but the bugs almost carried us away so we had to leave right away.  This proved to be a good thing though, as we moved out to more open water on the outside shoreline to try some islamorada backcountry snook fishing.  The islamorada backcountry fishing for snook has been off and on as of late, but we found some nice ones this morning.  Simply casting shrimp on heavy jigs and slowly bumping them along the shoreline sandbars and such worked for us, we caught 3 nice fish of 9-13 lbs in 45 minutes.  After this we tried to get back in the creeks again as the sun was up and wind had swung around a bit to give us a breeze in there, and luckily the bugs were gone.  We caught plenty of juvenile redfish and black drum florida keys flats fishing.  We continued working our way in the creek further, next stop some more redfish, sheepshead, and a whopper ~20 lb black drum!  This one dragged us down the creek and almost around a corner, but we gave chase and got him!  We hit one last spot and same thing, redfish and black drum, though we caught several nice big trout there as well.  The tide was about dead now, so we made our way back towards home.  Stopped in a channel for the last 45 minutes, and caught several trout, ladyfish, and jacks.  Capt. John Johnansen and Capt. Perry Scuderi stuck in the channel areas and reported good action fishing for trout, ladyfish, jacks, and such.  They also caught several black tip sharks.  Capt. John also caught a goliath grouper.  Lots of fun today florida keys flats fishing!

Capt. Rick Stanczyk
305-747-6903
rick@seethefloridakeys.net