Hot Fishing

Its summertime here in Islamorada so its HOT, my best advice is to leave the dock early and fish a 1/2 day trip then jump in the h20 and cool off. Lately we have been fishing the SeaHunter 24 bay boat more then the flats skiff and either buying lots of shrimp and a box of chum or netting pilchards and fishing the patch reefs. There are lots of opportunities to catch dinner and with lobster season opening you can jump overboard cool off and add a little something special to the table fair.  I like to fish the patches in the 20-30ft depth early in the morning then as the sun gets up and move back into shallower depths so if my clients want to snorkel they can make it to the bottom to look around for the lobster. When you move back to those shallow spots have your divers check around or use a dock line to drag them around its a great way to find new fishing spots, and they will have fun looking for lobster.  If you are headed to the backcountry to fish on the flats its really important to fish early, I try to be 1/2 way to flamingo as the sun is just coming up this way I can look for resident tarpon rolling around the islands or in the channels. On a recent trip to the backcountry the weather was so nice we headed out past the flats to a gulf wreck and found some permit up on the surface, this is one of the best ways to spend a calm summer morning. We had a few live crabs and the permit fishing was really good for us, I always have a few crabs in the bait well in the summer because you never know when you are going to run across a permit. gp