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Today started out as a Beautiful Day

Light winds, Clear Skies, Calm Seas. We stopped to get live bait as we often do this time of year. The Bait wasn’t easy, but we got what we needed. I knew from the weather reports that there was a cold front approaching Key West and it was due later this afternoon. The thing about Cold fronts is that you can’t really “schedule” them. They are going to get here when they get here. Sometimes they arrive later than predicted and sometimes they get here early.

Today was one of the days the front got here early

When we got out to the reef, I thought we had beat the weather………almost. We were fishing the reef out front of Key West and starting to get some good action with Cero Mackerel. It was sunny and warm. The key word in that last sentence is the word “was”. Cold fronts come from the North West. At first, it looks like a little line of clouds, but then it gets bigger and darker and bigger and darker. When the front hits, the temperature can drop 10 degrees in minutes. The wind increases, sometimes up to 40mph. And then there is the rain. It usually rains hard as the cold front passes and it’s a cold rain at that.

This trip was scheduled to be a full day, but once the front passes it’s not really fair to keep people out just to collect the full day rate. So we fished until the wind picked up and called it a 5 hr trip and headed in early.

We did get a really nice yellow Jack right before the front hit. You can see it approaching in the back of the photo below

large Yellow Jack caught on the Southbound in Key West

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