By: Capt. Bruce Andersen
Fishing on the reef offshore of the Florida Keys for yellowtail snapper is a great opportunity to experience some awesome light tackle action for some of the best eating fish available. These fish are fun to catch, great eating, and available all year long. Yellowtail can be caught anywhere from the shallow patch reefs all the way out to wrecks and rock piles in over 150 feet of water; but the best fishing usually takes place on the edge of the reef in depths from 40 to 90 feet of water.
Yellowtail snapper can be very temperamental. Sometimes it’s so easy to catch them that it can seem silly and other times it can be amazingly frustrating. There’s a saying that yellowtail snapper can be harder to catch than a blue marlin; the thinking is that if you had 300 blue marlin behind the boat you probably would be able to get one to bite, but sometimes when the yellowtail are wary you can literally be looking at a couple of hundred fish in your chum slick and not be able to get a bite out of any of them.
Most of the time the fishing conditions like water color and current will dictate how good the bite will be. If you’ve got dusty water and a moderate current flowing behind the boat, you’re probably going to have a good day with these fish. If the water is crystal clear and the current is flowing into the wind, bringing your chum right under the anchor line, then it’s probably a good day to go fishing for something else.
When everything comes together and the bite is on, you can be in for some awesome fishing. Every now and then you can get them chummed up into such a frenzy that they’ll be eating out of the chum bag right behind the boat and you can dip your bait in the water and hook them right there. We call this cane poling because you never have to let any line out of your reel. You can just dip your bait in and when you see a yellowtail eat it you pull him right out of the water before he even knows what happened. This doesn’t happen often, but when it does it’s a cool thing to see.
I like to chum heavy with a mix of chum and oats for these fish and usually use 12-pound spinning tackle with either a small #2 hook or a 1/32-ounce jig baited with small pieces of cut bait or shrimp. These fish bite year-round, but spring through fall is my favorite time to target them. If you’d like to get in on the action, give me a call. I’ll be happy to take you out and show you what it’s all about!
— www.captaineasycharters.com
You can reach Captain Bruce Andersen at Capt. Easy Charters,
MM 85, call 305.360.2120 or email at: captbrucekey@comcast.net