We don’t have a real winter here in the Florida Keys, but we do have cold fronts. The wind rotates clockwise and when there’s a North and the wind direction and it slows for a few days, well that’s our cold front. This year the cold fronts were few and far between and the water temperature barely got below 75 degrees. The Keys and the Straits of Florida are a special place being that we are in the travel patterns of several migratory offshore pelagic fish species. The fish are coming out of the Gulf of Mexico traveling up the Eastern seaboard and vice versa and have to swim right through our backyard going one way or the other. The two main characters of our target fish species would undoubtedly be the sailfish and the mahi mahi. There is no doubt a huge variety of fish swimming through the Florida Straits, and you don’t have to run 50-100 miles to gt to fish like in some places.
With all these different fish right out the back door it’s sometimes difficult to come up with a game plan each day. You can have plans of catching a bunch of snappers or filling the box with mahis, but anyone who’s fished long enough knows that plans can get thrown out very quickly when you get out there and the conditions are just not good for what you had in mind. I try and be prepared for most everything, and really don’t know where the day will take us until we get out there and 1. See what the water looks like (clear blue vs dirty green) 2. See which way the current, if any, is moving 3. See what baits we can gather for the livewells 4. Communicate with other skippers up and down the line see what’s biting and what conditions are. And Last but not least: Have an idea of what the customers have in mind and what they want to catch. Have fun and we’ll see you out there!
Captain Ross Early
EarlyBird Fishing Charters
Islamorada, FL
305-942-3618
www.fishearlybird.com