December fishing in Islamorada FL is hot!

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It's getting near Christmas and business is picking up here for fishing guides in Islamorada, Florida. I've been getting out a few days a week the first part of December though from a little before christmas to before new years my bookings are solid - a good sign for the 2015 season! Fishing was stellar the last couple days we fished as we had another good cold front chill things down this whole past week in Islamorada. Only one day did it blow hard and we did not fish that day, though the last couple days it's been fairly slick calm only a light breeze out of the north at 5 mph. The water temperatures in the everglades have been in the mid to high 60s, and the gulf it was about 68. Yesterday we caught the start of the falling tide out in the near gulf of mexico just outside the everglades park boundary. We put out the chum bag on one of my little white 'bay holes' and within 30 minutes we had all the spanish mackerel you could ask for. My anglers had just about a bite every cast for a solid hour and a half. Only a few macks in the 5 lb range, most were 2 to 3 lbs, but lots of fun on the ultralight gear that we went to. We fished bare yellow jigheads with shrimp, upping our leader to 60 lb due to their sharp teeth, and that worked perfect. Around 10:00 we ran back into everglades national park around flamingo. I hit some of the mangrove island moats with the mid falling tide. The first spot I hit was a gold mine, loaded with snook and a few other specimens. Again jigs and shrimp did the trick - with snook we usually horn-hook the shrimp to keep 'em alive and twitching. Slow twitching them as they drift along up under the edges of the trees. We landed around 20 snook, and a couple redfish and sheepshead too. After that we tried a few other spots on the bottom of the tide, but with the wind having swung around southeast by that point the flats didn't 'dry out' as you would hope with a stiffer north wind this time of year. Did not find much for drum in the channel run-offs, so we called it a day - but definitely one to remember! A couple days before that we hit the patch reefs and that fishing was stellar too. There have been plenty of hogfish, porgy, varieties of snappers, grouper, and occasional cero mackerel out there. Shrimp does wonders here though occasionally we are bringing pilchards for bigger mutton snappers and groupers. We saw some schools of permit mid day on some rocks last time too, though they were not really interested in biting for us but may of been better later in the afternoon. December and January are great times to come fishing in the Florida Keys, drop me a line if your interested!

Capt. Rick Stanczyk
305-747-6903
rick@seethefloridakeys.net
Islamorada Fishing Charters at Bud n' Mary's Marina