Winds were still howling today it’s been rough the past several days but that hasn’t kept us from getting out on the water and having a great time! Today on our key largo backcountry fishing trip we hit the edge of the gulf of mexico. Lots of spanish mackerel and mangrove snapper was the take! Shiny jigs tipped with shrimp did the trick, and of course a nice chum slick. I like to use 60# test mono for my leader, this holds up fairly well to the toothy mackerel, and is much easier to tie and handle then messing with wire. The snappers weren’t picky and ate it as well. We also did some key largo shark fishing and cut some fresh mackerel and put it on the bottom. Got a couple of nice blacktip sharks this way – even had a 300+ lb goliath grouper come up and try to eat the smaller of the sharks. We ended up hooking him however we didn’t have heavy enough equipment to pull him from the wreck on this january key largo fishing charter. After the tide quit, we ran into the backcountry and hit some channel run-offs on the end of the falling tide there. Had to look around a bit as the water has been really stirred up due to the 15-20mph east winds. We found a nice runoff and way up inside the water was looking much better. We caught several trout, one nice one of 22 inches and a few other keepers plus throwbacks. After they quite we looked around a bit more and eventually found another pack of them mixed in with lots of ladyfish. Great way to end the day fishing key largo in january!
