Fall Fishing on Fire in the Keys

[Capt Fuzzy Francois]

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The first day Fall brought HOT!!!!! Fishing throughout the Keys. First off I'll start Offshore. The Dolphin bite seems to be heating up as the water starts to cool just a tad, Capt Craig on the "Mr. Z" out of Key West Caught nice Dolphin West of Key West from the Sea Bouy all the way down to Cosgrove light, with 1 tipping the scales at 28 lbs. Capt Joe McCurio managed to raise a Sail and box 3 Wahoo among other fish.The fishing out of marathon has also been very good even though the charters have been slow as they always are at this time of year. Reports from Capt Dave Schugar of good numbers of large Mutton Snapper being taken from the wrecks off the reef in anywhere from 120' to 350', along with Vermillion Snapper, Amberjack and nice Black and Gag Grouper. I fished the reef on Saturday and the Flag Yellowtail were abundant and cooperative, I guess mostly due to a push of nasty looking green water that pushed out of the Gulf with the crazy high tides we had on the new moon. Something about the moon was the closest it is to Earth all year. The far Gulf wrecks have also been producing well. I had the opportunity to fish a couple of spots 50 or so miles out of Marathon last week and the Cobia and Extra Large Permit were on Fire!!!! You Know it's a good day when you limit out on Cobia and release another 10 and release 13 Permit on the same trip. We also caught good numbers of nice Mangrove and released lot's of Goliath Grouper. The flats fishing was a little off last week, again because of the tremendous tides and crazy moon, Dirty Water!!!! Off shore the bite has been a little whacko. On Thursday I fished Jim Teague and his wife, the target fish for the trip was tuna, didn't happen we trolled and also jigged at the Marathon Hump and came up with a blank. We decided to head to the West and try out Jims new rod and reel for some deep dropping for Snowy Grouper, turns out Jim's new reel dosen't hold enough line to hold the bottom in 1000'. Just as we were wraping up that and trying to figure out what to try next, there it was. A football field size carpet of Sargaso weed and other debris. We ran over to the edge of the weed and a Dolphin in the 30 lb class swam right up to the boat with his mouth open, into which we were happy to drop a live pinfish and so the story goes. I have only seen that many Slammer Dolphin in one place at one time once before, last year about 10 miles off Cuba on a 50' tree we found floating. I saw at least 50 to 60 slammers under that weed patch, it was just incredible. We definetly left em biteing. Well I guess that's all I have to report at this time. I will be fishing for the next few days and will let you know what 's biteing this week. Sail's should be starting to make an apperance soon, I have been seeing a lot of Pilchards around and that usally means the Sails aren't far behind. Until Later Tight Lines Capt Fuzzy Francois