Fishing Guides, Charters and Services of the Florida Keys
Florida Keys fishing report from the Florida Keys fishing guides that are making it happen every day for their clients on the water. has a lot going on. We will provide some updates from Key Largo all the way to Key West. Covering offshore to the Blue Water into the reef and inshore on the flats and in the backcountry. Also, some tips and tricks along the way.
Let’s get started. First off let’s talk about the weather for the last week or so and say it’s been epic. The winds of March and April finally mellowed out giving us variable winds and changing conditions up and down the Florida Keys. Of course, when the winds are up conditions can be sloppy for reef Fishing and Blue Water deep sea Fishing. April and May are two of the busiest months for Florida Keys fishing guides so things have been busy.
Reef Fishing Report
May 1 was the opening of the South Atlantic grouper season. This opens up black grouper, red grouper, scamp, and our deep water complex of snowy grouper and Gray tiles. NOTE: Golden Tiles, Warsaw Grouper are Both NO harvest right now.
Talking with Capt. Matt Bellinger of Bamboo Charters in Islamorada. He reports that the yellowtail snapper Fishing has been in 90+ feet of water due to the super Clear water. Mixing oats and sand into your chum balls might be required. The grouper fishing has been so so. He also says to have a mutton, snapper rig, ready to go when chumming in that deeper water.
We don’t have a marathon reef fishing report at this time we would love to hear from some of the Fishing guides that fish out there so we can update and share.
Key West reef fishing has been pretty amazing since the last full moon. Some really large yellowtail snapper mixed in with some nice mutton snappers as well as mangrove snappers are being caught on the regular. Key West reef Fishing is probably our most versatile in the Florida Keys. In addition, we will make note that the blackfin tuna fishing on the shrimp boats is fire. Many of our Key West reef Fishing captains offer that sort of fishing Charter.
Flats and Backcountry Fishing
Tarpon fishing is in full swing. We talk about tarpon here because most of our backcountry fishing and flats fishing guides are focused on catching Tarpon this time of year. May is the beginning of the tarpon spawn or migration where they come down the south edges of our islands and fill into our canals and channels go up on the flats and do their thing to make more tarpon. So that said we have tarpon all up and down the keys. The channels the Bridges, the Flats, they all have them. Our best reports are coming out of Key West tarpon fishing. The fishing guides at Dream Catcher Charters have been putting their clients on numbers of Fish each charter for the last few weeks.
The flats Fishing has been pretty epic as well. With the amazing water quality that Key West has right now there are bonefish and permit scattered all over the flats. This is a great time of year to target all three of the Key West flats fishing grand slam.
Islamorada backcountry Fishing has a fantastic report with very large trout. In addition, the snapper fishing is good as well. The report comes from Captain Matt Bellinger at Bamboo Charters.
Pro Tip Trout: Capt. Matt says the soft baits are getting the trout very well the larger the Bait, the bigger the trout. Best colors seem to be slightly glowing. Work the muds.
Pro Tip Tarpon: Capt. Steven Lamp in Key West owner of Dream Catcher Charters says the pinfish are working the best for live Bait. And for fly fishing, we switched to a purple or black bunny after 10 AM. His favorite artificial to throw at Tarpon is the 7 inch Hogy. White black and sometimes bone. Take your time and be patient.
Deep Sea Fishing Report
Deep sea fishing in the upper Keys in Islamorada and Key Largo has been pretty good. The Sailfish push was tremendous a couple or few weeks ago. There were a lot of fish caught by the fleet. Things have tapered down with the Sailfish making kite fishing more difficult unless you have helium due to the lower winds, however the large mahi-mahi push has begun just in the last few days there’s been some really nice fish caught with some smaller blackfin tunas as well.
Marathon deep sea fishing has been pretty strong as well. There have also been some large mahi reported being caught along with some Sailfish and wahoo. The humps have been producing some smaller blackfin tunas with the occasional Skip Jack aka “skippie”.
Moving all the way down The Keys to Key West deep sea fishing it has been challenging for the last week with a massive amount of weed that was just not lining up due to lots of light wind switches, and fewer fish. However, there have been some large mahi picked out of the weed piles up to 35 lbs and quite a few wahoo up to 40 lbs and some sailfish with the occasional blackfin tuna by the Key West deep sea fishing fleet. The boats that have mates that don’t mind shagging the baits from the weed are winning. For certain up and down the Florida Keys the deep sea fishing catch ratios have not been great, but they are getting better the last two days.
Florida Keys Fishing Forecast
Here in the Florida Keys, especially in Key West everything revolves around the Gulfstream and what that snake of a river does is anyone’s guess. Deep-sea fishing in the Bluewater can improve, and probably will throughout the month. The long range forecast looks very good to bring tropical like conditions and keep the great fishing on the reef, and in the back country also on the flats rock solid. The tarpon fishing migration will continue through the month of May all the way through June. Traditionally, May is one of our best Florida Keys, fishing months and judging by long range weather forecast this will be a good one.
