These reports come from our friend and guide Drew Delashmit from Key West, Florida. Paula and I have know Drew for years and we highly recommend him as a guide. He specializes in Bonefish, Permit and Tarpon. You can reach him at tfalcatus@aol.com
The fishing this week has been everything that you want and everything you look forward to during the winter months. The weather has been ideal for the past week with warm days and nights and plenty of sunshine during the day. This in combination with relatively light winds has made the tarpon fishing very consistent. Although I have seen the tarpon fishing better at this time other years, we are still getting at least 30 to 40 good shots at laid up fish and small strings of fish slowly cruising edges. Each day this week we managed between 6 to 10 grabs, putting roughly half of those fish in the air and landing a couple of fish a day. We didn't land any monsters this week, around 85lbs was the biggest, but did get shots at some fish between 130 and 150lbs. I am generally using 11 and 12 wt rods for these fish with 20lb tippet and 60lb shock tippet. This size tackle provides some margin of angler error, while still protecting tackle and giving the fish the advantage. The key to tarpon fishing this time of the year is casting. Although the casts are rarely longer than fifty feet, you must be able to get the fly that distance with a minimum amount of false casting and put the fly in just the right zone. Your first cast needs to be your best cast because these fish willl not tolerate multiple shots.
The permit seem to have moved offshore to begin their spring time spawn. While still present on the flats, their numbers are drastically reduced from last month and more and more of the fish are being seen on the wrecks and reefs offshore. They generally reappear slowly during May and more consistenly in June. The permit fishing is often good right through the summer months and well into the fall and early winter. Luckily, the tarpon fishing is generally good enough that permit are the farthest thing from my mind during the late spring and early summer.
Date: Mar 29th, 2006, 5:22pm
The fishing has been up and down this past week. Most of March was fantastic weather -warm, dry and a little bit of wind, but Friday morning a strong cold front pushed through the Keys. Before the front, the permit fishing had been very consistent with a good number of happy fish working the flats and the tarpon made a strong showing in the backcountry. In fact, both Wednesday and Thursday of last week gave us light winds and temperatues in the mid 80's and the tarpon fishing was quite good. We had a couple of dozen shots a day and managed to put several fish in the air. However, the front brought high winds and cool temperatures for the entire weekend. Water temps dropped from the low 80's to the mid 60's in just a couple of days and the tarpon and permit headed for deeper water. The early part of this week had some barracuda providing action and the occasional shot at permit and bonefish. Luckily, the weather is on its way to recovery and the forecast is calling for the winds to gradually subside and the temperatures to reach the mid 80's by the early part of next week. This should bring in good numbers of tarpon in the 80 to 120 pound range. Happiness is warm, calm weather and tarpon laid up high in the water in a backcounty basin. The past week has definitely shown just how good the fishing can be during the spring in the lower keys, and hopefully we are finished with the cold weather until next December.
