November is moving right along and the backcountry fishing in Key Largo has been pretty great. We’ve had our first real ‘cold front’ of the year, with the temperature dipping into the high 50s for a night in Key Largo. This has helped some of the backcountry fishing tremendously. Our winter time cast of characters include snook, redfish, black drum, sheepshead, trout, spanish mackerel, and more. Many of these fish can be caught year round, but the winter time is better as they prefer the cooler water temperatures. Many seem to be pushed down from further north as it gets colder up there. Snook have been around the mangrove islands, shorelines, and creek mouths feed voraciously on pilchards and shrimp when water temperatures have dipped. I’ve been catching more snook than anything back there and they are a whole lot of fun, my last several trips we landed double digits in numbers. The redfish, black drum, and sheepshead have been found in the channel runoffs on low tides, and are starting to show up in the deeper creeks and canals where we find them in the winter. We had one very good day landing over 20 reds, the rest it has been a handful. Though we will get more redfish and black drum as it continues to cool off and less snook. I have not done much with spanish mackerel yet in the gulf, though I have had a few reports of good fishing out there. As it continues to cool we will see more and more of that. We did see a big school of cobia on a wreck out there one day last week, however the jack crevelles were so thick you could hardly get a bait to them. However a boat that was fishing the same trip with me ended up getting a couple. The patch reefs have been on fire lately. The last several trips out there yielded plenty of porgies, snappers, some small groupers, and of course the delectable hogfish. If you want to book a key largo fishing trip, now is a great time! Most of my November is booked up and I am going out of town for Thanksgiving for a week, but early December is fairly wide open. Let’s get out for your key largo fishing charter in December!
