Got out with Jake and Jason for the day. We had a pretty stiff change in temperature, it had been in the 80s for a little bit here and last night it plummeted down into the low 60s. Sharp drop in water temperature. Sometimes this can make the fishing tough as the fish haven’t had time to slowly adjust as they usually do when we ease from summer, to fall, to winter, with more gradual cool downs. Anyways water temps were in the high 60s and early in the morning nothing wanted to bite. We jumped around from spot to spot, did get one black drum and a trout but that was it aside from some catfish. Water was super muddy too with the hard west wind we had the day before as the front came in. So we bailed and then tried to find some reds on the bottom of the tide around some flats. Caught one in the first stop, but that was it. We made one more big move and at first that seemed to not be producing. But finally around 10:30 or so the tide began to change, and the fish started to bite. We moved and picked away and ended up with about two dozen redfish. After that we were in search of dinner, we tried an island for some snapper in the early afternoon. However the redfish were swarming in the snapper hole! We caught probably another 18 redfish here, and a few snappers but none that were big enough. We tried a ditch for some trout, but it was loaded with ladyfish that we enjoyed bending the rod with. Anyways all in all we caught a good amount of fish but really had to work for it. I usually love the cold weather fishing, but I always tell people you have to catch it right. When it’s been bordering on hot for a while and then all of a sudden you have a massive cool down, usually you are going to have a tough time. However the fish should have had a chance to adjust now and we have some more cold weather on the way later this week, so it should get back into normal winter time mode here..
Capt. Rick Stanczyk
Instagram: @richardstanczyk
Facebook: Islamorada Tarpon Fishing
