LOWER KEYS WINTER OFFSHORE FISHING

As I woke up listening to the twenty plus mile per hour wind howling outside my bedroom window I wondered how big the seas were going to be that day. My two anglers were coming to fish with me on my 25' center console offshore boat.

By eight o'clock the boat was loaded with four light spinning rods and a couple of heavier ones for possible deep dropping. The bait wells were filled with a mix of large and medium sized Pilchards (sardines). Our first stop was a patch reef sitting in only thirty feet of water were we anchored and started chumming to attract whatever fish were around. By the time the chum block had melted we had caught yellowtail, mangrove and mutton snapper, gag and red grouper, jacks, cero mackerel, and other reef species.

The waves were of considerable size but being inside the reef they did not shake us around too bad. We decided to lift anchor and head for the deep water in search of Sailfish. During the winter months the Sailfishing off the Keys can be extraordinary and it seems to be getting better every year.

At times the Sailfish can be spotted tailing down sea were an angler can sight cast to them. The conditions have to be right for this to happen by having a strong easterly wind and an opposing easterly current. This combination of opposing wind and current creates a slowing down of current speed on the surface of the seas were Sailfish take advantage in their migratory route towards the west and raise to the surface to make their traveling less energy consuming.

The third variable to make sight fishing for Sailfish possible is having a powder green or blue colored water to be able to see them coming. This is a common condition when the winds are strong and this day the powder was bright green from the reef at 90 feet deep to 210 feet deep.

We stopped the boat at about 160 feet deep off the reef with a rolling sea of eight to ten foot waves. Immediately, we spotted a pod of two Sailfish cruising right off our starboard side only 50 feet from the boat. He took a rod of the holder that was ready with fifteen-pound test, a forty-pound shock leader, and a sharpened 3/0 live bait hook. He made a cast ahead of the fish and they stopped traveling, cruised over to the bait circling it with their sails up and their bodies lit up like a purple glow stick.

In no time at all he was tight with one of them. By that time I had casted a second bait and had hooked the other Sailfish. After releasing one of the Sailfish and breaking the other one off we set up again and in no time at all we had hooked five more Sailfish.

After a couple of hours the clouds took over our fishing making it hard to see them coming down sea and we decided to go deep dropping on a ship wreck sitting at one hundred feet deep. After anchoring off the wreck all three of us started trying different strategies to see what was going to work. One angler dropped a large Pilchard with a small sinker. The other angler was trying a light jig tipped with a medium sized Pilchard casting it far behind the boat, letting it sink and retrieving it slowly, and I was dropping a heavy led jig to the bottom.

After a few minutes one of the two anglers hooked up big. His rod was doubled over and he started leaning back and grunting. He fought the fish for about five minutes and as it came to the surface we could see that it was a large Mutton Snapper. The Boga-Grip confirmed it at 18 lbs. We all switched to the rig that had worked and soon after another hook up resulting in a 16 lbs. Mutton Snapper. The bite seemed to have stopped after we caught the two and we started seeing lots of fish in the vicinity crashing balls of baits.

After pulling anchor, we rigged our spinners with plugs and jigs and headed over to the bait balls to see what we could hook up. The Cero Mackerel, and Bonita were all over and in one occasion the Yellowtail Snapper came to the surface of the water crashing the bait. All you could see were their forked yellow tails flipping out of the water by the hundreds. One of the anglers brought one to the boat in the 20-inch range with a top water plug.

The day had past and we were sad to leave all the action but the sun was shortly going to be reaching the horizon. We cranked the engines one last time and scooted across the waves back to the dock laughing and chatting about our day.

LOWER KEYS WINTER OFFSHORE FISHING

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