We are getting to the time of year when the water is getting very warm around the lower Keys. The tropical sun is beating down on both the island and the water. In other words………..it’s hot. We had a full-day trip today, which gives us enough time to get offshore and look around for fish. When the inshore water gets warm on the surface, the fish go deep. The further offshore you go, the better chance of running into the current. Usually, it is the edge of the Gulfstream and is moving east. Sometimes we will get a counter-current moving west. Either way, some current is better than none. Even though you can’t see where the current is on calm days, it keeps the waters cooler by constantly turning the ocean over.
So we headed out deep looking for an edge. The current inshore was going West, but when we headed offshore in the morning the conditions did not look right. There was not a lot of sargassum weed to fish and the water wasn’t as blue as we would like. We found some weed of in about 750 ft of water and got some throwback dolphin and a couple of “keepers” but it was not “busy”. As I said, we were on a full-day trip and I was going to head out deeper but one of my group was not feeling well. I was worried that if I went further offshore she would feel worse and we would be further from shore.
There were already a couple of boats out deeper and they were not seeing any weed, and they were not catching any fish. I did hear a couple of boats that were actually inshore of us and the found a “rip” with some weed and fish on it. A “rip” is a current edge and it can be very good for fishing. We were not doing much where we were, The other boats south of us were not catching much. It sounded like our best bet was to head back inshore
As we worked our way back in toward Key West, we started finding a lot of decent-sized Sargassum weed patches. These patches were not there when we headed out in the morning. I’m guessing the current brought them to the area while we were to the South. Doesn’t really matter, We started catching some decent “schoolie” sized fish. We got 2 “gaffers” including a 10lb Bull Dolphin.
Most of the time, if we are not catching fish, we have a tendency to go deeper. We want to look further out. Usually, that is the right call, but not always. Today, even though we had a full-day trip, staying closer was better. We finished the day strong