4-20-13 Spring time fishing in Islamorada

It's definitely "spring time" fishing here in Islamorada. Some boats have been venturing "offshore" for mahi and some are still pounding out the edge of the reef. (Offshore charter boats just refer to the larger boats that fish the atlantic side of Islamorada) Today was a little on the slow side for the offshore charters overall. There was a handful of mahi around, but not many at all. Some boats had a few but some boats never came across any. There has been plenty of big bruiser amberjack though. These fish have been in the 25 - 55 lb range. There's also been a few skipjack tuna around. Unfortunately the blackfin tuna appear to be non existent. Usually this time of year is great for blackfin tuna, but Hey, that's why they call it fishing. Hopefully they show up soon. The yellowtail snapper bite was mediocre today for most boats, although the Miss Islamorada did great while florida keys party boat fishing, they had about 200 yellowtail snapper! There was a couple decent catches of mahi yesterday and then a few good catches the day before. April is still just to early to count of them! You may spend all day looking and never find them, but if you get lucky and find the right piece of debris (floating debris will hold bait fish and in turn hold mahi) , you can make your entire islamorada fishing trip in one stop! The Relentless did that a few days ago and also had a wahoo. One great thing about fishing at bud n marys marina is that most of the boats work with each other and help each other out. He then called another boat over and the gon fishin V wound up catching 5 wahoo from 10 to 20 lbs off of the debris, and also a couple mahi. Most of the wahoo caught lately have been on the debris while looking for mahi in the 250' - 600' zone. There's been a few king mackerel around the reef as well as a few permit. I didn't see any sailfish flags flying today but there was a few up yesterday, the Reel McCoy had 2 releases and the Predator had one. The Relentless and Kalex each had one release the day before. The florida keys shark fishing has still been good and here's a picture of an est. 500 lb tiger shark released today aboard the Bn'M. The cobia have been thin as well, but while we were fighting a 200 lb bull shark aboard the Bn'M today a pair of them followed up the shark and we caught a 20 lber. I would expect the next week of fishing to be like the past week, with a variety of fish being caught. Hopefully we get some more sargassum weed to float offshore of islamorada soon and when that shows up again there should be some more mahi with that. On May 1st our shallow water grouper season opens, so I'm sure we'll see quite a few black and gag groupers soon!  Yesterday the Gold Digger had an incredible catch of yellowtail snapper with big "flags" (2 + lb yellowtail snapper whose tails look like yellow flags when they are in the water waving around), and the Kalex also did.

Comments

[Robin]

I wanted to thank the crew of Miss Islamorada for making my son's 13th birthday awesome on the 20th. He had a blast fishing on his birthday with dad and a friend. He was so excited to come home with all those yellowtail. We will definitely be booking with you again.