It’s mid september and things are starting to slightly cool off a bit here in Key Largo Florida Keys. The key largo backcountry fishing has been steady and should get better as the water temperatures lower and we get some big pushes of baitfish down the coast. As we get into October following those baitfish are huge schools of everything – tarpon, snook, redfish, trout, and more! For part of October you may even witness the fall bait run when there are tens of thousands of baitfish that get pounded by hungry tarpon and other fish. As you can tell, I get very excited about fishing this time of year and really look forward to it. If your in the area lets set something up it’s not a very busy time so you often have the area to yourselves and the fishing ca be fantastic! Lately it’s been typical off season, I’ve only been fishing a couple charters a week and fun fishing myself a bit. I was out of town a couple weeks from mid august till early september. The last couple weeks fishing has been decent for this time of year. Still some tarpon around in the backcountry with some big sharks october fishing in key largo. We landed a 70 lb tarpon last saturday and had some big goliath groupers as well off some wrecks and shorelines structure. There were some snook too that were pulling major drag. Plenty of white bait (pilchards) are starting to show up around many of the usual spots (shorelines, canals, moats). These guys will grow in size over the next couple months and we catch them for bait all thru the fall and winter. Snook love ’em! A few days we were catching dinner which turned out to be very nice size mangrove snapper! We got some nice size trout as well mixed in. They were eating large chunks of bait, and many were in the 2 to 3 lb range which is great for the inshore areas. I was sight fishing for fun the other day too with fellow Capt. Bill and we saw probably 2 dozen snook and redfish, landing a couple nice reds but the snook were not interested in our live shrimp presentation. As we get into October, look for the spanish mackerel bite to pick up and mixed in with them are plenty of large bluefish, ladyfish, snapper, trout, and of course big blacktip sharks! That is great action and can catch dinner too, plus further out there are often triple tail and cobia in the gulf. Drop me a line and lets go fishing if your down here this time of year, key largo inshore fishing is great!
Capt. Rick Stanczyk
305-747-6903
rick@keylargofishingreport.com
