Drift fishing is heating up this month as the first days of summer begin. Action on kingfish is increasing with every day as we get deeper into June. This is the season for pervasive action on the reef from kingfish and bonitos to barracuda and blackfin tuna. Drifting out a weighted sardine or ballyhoo works excellent this time of year. Butterfly jigs and whip jigs also work great and can sometimes entice a bite from a bigger fish. Even this late in the season there are still some smoker kingfish around. We’ve had some 30+ pound kingfish hit the dock this week. The bigger kings will most likely slack off towards the end of the month as a multitude of new fish will arrive. The weather in south Florida is hot in the summer and so is the action.
The bottom fishing is also very good this month, especially at night. On our night anchor trips, we chum the water and target the different variety of snappers on the reef. On this trip, we are catching loads of yellowtail and mangrove snappers. Yellowtail snappers in particular are biting exceptionally good and are swarming up to the back of the boat in the chum line. Mangrove snappers hang pretty close to the bottom and are also biting very well, you just have to get your bait down there and wait them out. Mutton snappers are the biggest snappers that we catch and we’re currently catching a handful of them on just about every trip. There are usually a couple days around the full moon in June when the muttons spawn and really snap. Last year during the June mutton spawn, we really crushed them, catching 20-30 muttons per night on the best nights. The snapper action is hot this month.
Good luck to everyone fishing this month. Sea ya on the water.
Capt. Paul Roydhouse
Fishing Headquarters
www.FishHeadquarters.com
https://www.facebook.com/FishingHQ
(754) 214-7863