Well a big ol’ cold front rolled in yesterday and chilled things down a bit. Today we really felt the bite of it as the water temperatures finally dropped too and got to a bone chilling 58 degrees in some parts of the key largo backcountry. Fishing can be good when this happens believe it or not, you just have to know where to go. It can take some patience but luckily today they were fairly happy so it didn’t take long. We got the key largo black drum going pretty good early on after the first 20 minutes of fishing or so. A shrimp on a knocker rig or just plain jighead did the trick. We usually just put a glob of shrimp meat on the hook and the stinkier you can get it the better, then just set it out and twitch it every so often. No large drums but plenty of ’em. After that the snook started to roll in. Here we would fish a live shrimp, head hooked on a jig head. Moving them slowly up and down would entice the bite. The snook were kind of in shock and didn’t fight much, but still fun to catch ’em. We later found some more snook in another area, and got a redfish too. Picked away at a couple sheepshead and trout in another area after that, and ended up finding a few more black drums in some spots I hadn’t fished in a while. That was good to see always nice to have another spot to try when the going gets tough. All in all a fun day on the water I think we caught over 50 fish. Just doesn’t get any better than that. If you are down in key largo in december and want to go fishing, give me a shout. Christmas week is right around the corner and will be very busy, but before christmas I have openings and am still offering my special rates after hurricane IRMA before our 2018 season begins on xmas!
Capt. Rick Stanczyk
Instagram: @richardstanczyk
Facebook: Islamorada Tarpon Fishing
