By: Capt. Rob Modys
June is one of two of my favorite months here in the Keys. October is the other. June is what I call the beginning of “solid” summer with rain showers and storms almost every day along with warm nights. October is just the opposite in my mind because the air temperatures finally begin to cool down and you never know what the weather is going to be like from day to day. This cooler weather also drops water temperatures just a bit and that turns on fish as they begin to fatten up for the winter months.
But I’ll still give June the edge over October.
June supplies many anglers the best fishing of the entire year. It’s almost impossible to get skunked in the backcountry or the ocean where everything seems to be feeding on everything. Stop on one of the many patch reefs and drop a chum bag in the water, wait a short time and you’ll soon be surrounded by snapper, jacks, grunts, blue runners and ballyhoo.
I love looking down into about thirty feet of crystal-clear water and seeing scads of fish rotating underneath the boat ready to eat anything dropped down to them. Granted many of them will be undersized, but you can’t beat the action, and there’s always the possibility of a big surprise showing up.
In the backcountry I’ll move from spot to spot looking for snook, redfish, seatrout and late season tarpon.
June is my favorite month to hunt for stingrays cruising across the mud flats in upper Florida Bay. No, it’s not about catching rays, it’s about hooking up with what almost always follows directly behind them in the mud trails they create. I’ve caught huge jacks and healthy redfish using this trick. The object is to get a fly, lure or a shrimp on a jig head as close as possible to the back of the ray without spooking it. The strike from whatever is following will come almost as soon as the offering hits the water. Fight it to the boat, release the fish and then hunt for another ray. I can spend hours doing this on a beautiful June day.
For those anglers that live and fish close to the Gulf of America, June is a good month to chase pelagic species like mackerel and bonita. Big schools of thread fin herring and scaled sardines are massed up and moving with both the inbound and outbound tides. Search for birds working over the marauding fish and then move in as close as you can to make a cast. If you get too close to the action the bait will spook and head down away from the surface of the water and the feeding fish will follow.
For this reason, I like to toss Rat-L-Traps and Kastmasters. Both can be thrown long distances and create lots of flash once in the water, and they also have a profile that looks very much like the bait fish the mackerel and bonita are chasing.
It’s June. Get out there and enjoy best month of fishing!