Fishing Report

The deep drop fishing off Key Largo has been outstanding the last two weeks. Fishing the bottom in depths ranging from 600 to 850 feet. off Key Largo, my crew and I on Fins and Feathers charters have been catching Golden Tilefish up to 35 lbs., Snowy grouper up to 40 lbs. , Blueline tilefish, and roseperch. The gulstream current which usually runs 3 to 4 knots to the northeast has slowed to about one knot. This is allowing us to keep our baits on the bottom without being pushed up by the usually fast current. We like to use 4 hooks spaced about a foot apart on a long leader with a 7lb. weight on the bottom. Since light doesnt travel much further than 300 ft we put a battery operated light on the leader. The bait of choice is usually cut bonito strips, squid, or barracuda chunks. This type of fishing isn't for everyone since the depth were fishing requires us to use electric fishing reels. That takes the sport out of it but if you like to eat what you catch than this is just the ticket for you. Whatever you catch off the bottom in this depth will taste great. The groupers and tilefish off Key Largo have excellent white meat with great flavor, probably because of the deep cold water and there diet which usually consists of crustaceans and small fish. My anglers John Melton, Sean, and Mike fished with me on Saturday. We headed straight to the deep spot and on the second drop we brought up a 35 lb. golden tilefish. What a beautiful fish with all of its neon yellow spots. Then it was time to run to the grouper hole in 600 ft. We found a piece of debris on the way to the spot and caught a dozen dolphin which were swimming around the structure. Two of the fish weighed over 15 lbs. The gouper spot was also productive catching 2 Snowy groupers, the biggest weighing 35 lbs.

   While targeting the bottom fish it is a good idea to keep a surface bait out just in case some mahi-mahi swim up. This can usually pay big like last week when a big school of dolphin(mahi-mahi) swam up to us while we were deepdropping. There were probably 30 fish in the school and we caught 26 of them up to 20lbs. There were wahoo around to, and we caught three of them. This time of year we do not catch as much dolphin as we do in the summer, but while we are bottom fishing there is always a chance to get lucky off Key Largo. We are waiting patientley for the first cold fronts to start arriving which will push the Sailfish from up north down to the Florida Keys. We will probably start seeing this push late October into November. So get ready, the Sailfish are on there way to Key Largo!