Got out with Terry and his dad Paulie for a full day today. We mixed it up and decided to fish in the everglades which is usually a good bet for key largo fishing in november. We also decided afterwards to try the gulf of mexico. The november spanish mackerel fishing in key largo usually heats up this time of year, though this year it’s been a little slow to start with the lack of cold weather and possibly the hurricane… Anyways we had a good start we loaded up our live wells with pilchards and brought some shrimp along too. We picked away at snook in the everglades canals fishing. Not a red hot bite plus it was a saturday so there were boats everywhere! But we managed a couple fish at each spot the first 3 spots we stopped at. Paulie got the two largest ones, not bad for a 90 year old he had a lot of fun! After that things slowed down a bit but we did see some cool crocodiles and wild bird life. We decided to test out the gulf fishing and it was a good move! We got the spanish mackerel chumming with frozen chum. We had action on our shrimp with jigs as well as the live pilchards. Paulie wasn’t as comfortable in the open water though it was farily calm so I assisted him with the casting and just used the live bait that we could let sit out there, while Terry jigged with shrimp at a faster pace. We caught probably 8 or so mackerels, and probably had another 8 or 10 bites. This is the best I’ve seen the mackerel fishing this year. This was all in about an hour or so. After the tide slowed down so did the bite. But we also got some mixed bag action with lane snapper, blue runners, blue fish, and large lady fish. Great way to end our day of key largo backcountry fishing! Have plenty of open days the next couple weeks, give me a shout if you’d like to come on down!
Capt. Rick Stanczyk
Instagram: @richardstanczyk
Facebook: Islamorada Tarpon Fishing