6/2/15 Early June Offshore fishing

It's hard to believe we are already fishing in June in Islamorada. Most of the the offshore charter fleet has been running out to the gulfstream lately targeting mahi, although a couple boats have been staying closer to home and fishing on the reef, especially on 1/2 day charters. I always tell everyone fishing for mahi is like hunting. Sometimes it's super easy and you find schools of fish all day long, and other times it's hard work and you spend all day waiting for the one opportunity. Sometimes that opportunity is a school of migrating fish with birds following them, or a school of fish following a sea turtle, or fish under a piece of floating debris. When that opportunity arrises you need to make it count. With the recent full moon the fish have been a little tough to get to bite, so live bait has really helped out. There's no guarantee you will catch fish when you guy "fishing", hence the name, but the boats at Bud n' Mary's are some of the hardest working and most consistent fisherman in the area. Yesterday all the boats had good catches, today only 1/2 the boats found any numbers of fish! It changes day to day, but these reports cover the fishing over a week. Overall the past week we saw good mahi fishing. The boats have been averaging 15 - 25 fish. One boat had over 50 fish yesterday, but only 1 today! Some days you just have bad luck and you have a slow day fishing. The mahi have been averaging from 3 - 12 lbs, with a few fish from 20 - 30 lbs, and a couple bigger. There has been a few tripletail around the floating debris lately too. Last week the Predator found a floating pallet early in the morning and made their entire day on one stop by 9:30 am! They caught 3 big bulls, one going 44 lbs, and 25 other schoolie and gaffer mahi! We've also seen quite a few "football" (3 - 5 lb) blackfin tuna on the humps, as well as a few amberjacks and almaco jacks on the bottom. The swordfish bite has been fair, the Bn'M tagged and released a juvenile broadbill their last trip, and the Catch 22 caught a 120 lb swordfish one trip but their next trip was slow with no bites. Back on the reef we have been seeing lots of yellowtail snapper, a handful of mangrove snapper, as well as a few mutton snapper. I did a little "deep dropping" (bottom fishing in 400 - 800' of water) the last couple trips and we caught rose porgy, blueline tilefish, snowy gouper, and a queen snapper. Remember there's always something to catch off Islamorada, and you have to be ready for everything! Bring your family down and come fishing this summer and we'll show you a good time at Bud n' Mary's! Give us a call at 305 664 2461 to book your Islamorada Fishing Charter.

Capt. Nick Stanczyk