1/24/15 January Florida Keys Backcountry Fishing Report

January is almost over and spring time is getting near!  The weather lately could have fooled anyone that was fishing down here as it was very warm the last week or so.  Tonight though we have a good cold front coming in and looks to be chilly through most of the next week.  This will give a good kick start to more of our traditional winter time fishery but slow things like tarpon fishing down.  As of late the mackerel fishing in the gulf has been very good.  The bite has been solid on just about all conditions and if you want rod bending, drag screaming action it is the way to go.  We had plenty of mackerel action today on a half day trip, plus some mangrove snappers for dinner.  Fishing in the everglades was fairly good earlier last week, though the last few days with the hard southeasterly winds and warm weather it got a little tougher back there.  I had Andy and his boys Derek and Konrad early in the week.  We had a decent day having to fish hard but put together a good catch of multiple redfish, a snook, sheepshead, and plenty of spanish mackerel to finish up the day.  Fun fishing early last week we also had plenty of black drum including a big 25 lber, snook, redfish, and tripletail.  Capt. Bill Bassett reported good tripletail fishing several days ago the last day it was calm.  Yesterday I know Capt. Jeff Beeler had action with trout, ladyfish, jacks, etc... and caught a nice tarpon while fishing for bigger stuff.  Capt. Chris Daly today had some snapper action as well as some grouper mixed in, and finished up with some spanish mackerel too.  Capt. Skip Nielsen had some large blacktip sharks on the fly the other day, looked like lots of fun!  As stated expect things to cool down for the next week but this should be a good thing for those looking to venture out into the glades, as well as for mackerel fishing in the gulf or patch reef fishing.

Capt. Rick Stanczyk