2-26-13 Florida Keys Offshore Fishing Report

It looks like we have another front coming through in a couple of days with some cooler air temps, but for right now we are still just deep sea fishing in Islamorada in February. Today we had a strong south in the morning about 15 to 20 knots, making it rough on the reef, but the fish didn't seem to mind. On the Bn'M we started out by catching 6 king mackerel, not huge but still good fighters in the 5 to 8 lb range, and then we decided to go anchor down for some Islamorada reef fishing. We chummed heavily and managed 15 snappers. Most were nice size yellowtails in the 1.5 - 2 lb range but we also had 2 muttons, including one nice one at 9 lbs. We missed a sailfish in the kite but luckily we spent the last couple hours of the day trying for sails and sure enough we caught and released one the last 5 minutes of the Islamorada Fishing Charter. The Gon Fishin V had some regulars on the boat and they had a couple bucket fulls of yellowtail snapper and a decent mutton snapper too. The Kalex had a rack full of king mackerel and a bucket of yellowtai snapper for dinner as well. The Catch 22 had a couple king mackerel, a blackfin tuna, a mutton snapper, and some yellowtails too. The Fearless fished for a few hours and also had some yellowtails for dinner. The key to being successful while florida keys fishing is to fish the conditions, and thats what the offshore boats did. Yesterday the Relentless released 1 sailfish and had a blackfin tuna, yellowjack, and a limit of king mackerel, The Fearless had some yellowtails in the morning and stuck to sailfishing for the afternoon, and right before they wound up the lines they hooked and landed a double header sailfish to end the trip! Great Job. We have a new edition to the offshore charter fleet as well, a 34' sea vee by the name of "Gold Digger", and Raymond is the captain. Yesterday they had a great catch of snapper including a few monster yellowtails weighing over 5 lbs!