Well it’s been pretty chilly while March offshore fishing in Key Largo the past couple of days. This week has felt more like a January week to be honest with you. The fishing trips lately have been decent, but the days have been decided by only a couple of bites! Sometimes its like that while Key Largo Fishing, you can be a hero or a zero by catching or missing the couple quality bites you get on a fishing trip. Bait was tough this morning, but after trying our 4th spot we had enough live bait to go put the kites up. After about 30 minutes we got a bite. Fortunately we hooked and landed the sailfish. I got some underwater video of the fish boatside and he swam off healthy. We tried for another hour after that but no more kite bites, so then we went and decided to catch some dinner fish. We “chicken rigged” about 15 lane snappers and after that finished off the day by releasing 7 or 8 barracuda. Yesterday we caught a few mahi and lost a few, as well as missing a pack of sailfish. Sometimes they can make you look foolish, and this group of fish got the best of us. In the afternoon we anchored down for some bottom fishing and caught a big margate, a nice yellowtail snapper, and then released about 6 black grouper, including a couple that would have been keepers if they were in season (shallow water grouper season is closed until May 1st). Before the temperatures dropped drastically the bottom fishing was good on the reef, we were catching plenty of yellowtail as well as a few mutton snapper. We also have been catching some cobia inside the reef following sting rays, about 1/2 the fish have been keepers and the rest have been throw backs. We had one monster a couple weeks ago that weighed 57 lbs! Offshore we also went deep dropping in 500′ of water, where it’s legal to keep certain deep water groupers, and we caught a nice 15 lb snowy grouper. Back on the reef we have also been having lots of fun with barracuda. We’ll probably stick it out on the reef the next few weeks for most our our key largo fishing charters, but hopefully we’ll hit up the humps for a couple days as well. So when you’re ready to go on your fishing trip shoot me an email and I’d love to get you out, it’s worth the 20 minute drive south!
Capt. Nick Stanczyk
