Great weather, great fishing on the patches! 1/3/11

With the winds dying out and blowing around 10 mph out of the north, it's been fairly calm out front for a little Florida Keys Fishing.  Capt. Rick Stanczyk fished a half day this morning and did well on some shallow patches.  Shrimp was the bait of choice as well as a few chunks of ballyhoo.  We caught plenty of mangrove snappers along with a handful of nice ones, lots of blue runners, yellowtail, some smaller grouper varieties, some spanish mackerel, porgies, and 8 or so 6-10 lb jack crevalles.  Very fun on light tackle!!!  It was calm enough to go out a little further as the report from yesterday was the kingfish were biting so good they were eating jigs with shrimp, however we didn't have any luck doing that the last 45 minutes of our day, so we headed in to end our day of Islamorada Fishing.  We caught plenty of fish for lunch and sent the boys over to lazy days for some lazy days style snapper!  Capt. Skip Nielsen also reported similar catches from the day before, he also caught some nice cudas around the lighthouse as well as some king mackerel!

Ringing in the new year in the backcountry! 1/1/11

Galen Edie & his family(Galen,Nick, Chris & Sean) Bud & Mary's Florida Keys Fishing regulars for 20 years,rung in the new year fishing with Capt Jim Willcox & Ken Cohan on Dec 31st & Jan 1st. Day one was filled with plenty of trout & a full limit of snappers for all 5 anglers. Day two the boats split up & fished two different areas. Both boats caught double digit redfish,black drum,sheepshead,& large trout. Shrimp was the main bait of choice back here with the water still being somewhat cool!  The weather was beautiful & there were no other boats around. The pics are of Sean with a nice black drum, Dad with a big trout, a close encounter with a crocodile, & a sneak preview of a new dam under construction.  Great way to spend a day fishing in Islamorada!