7/10/14 July Key Largo Fishing Report

It’s full swing  summer time here in key largo in july.  The fishing has been great I really must say.  We are still catching tarpon consistently in the everglades.  The bite ‘around town’ had slowed during the days, but can still be good early morning or later in the afternoon/evenings.  I like my full days this time of year and to start early leaving the dock by 6 AM.  It makes catching bait and fishing a whole lot easier and often better.  Most days I am tarpon fishing in the mornings and a quick stop around some of the backcountry ‘mullet spots’ loads us up with bait.  Whereas if you are there an hour later often times you may be throwing the net a lot more and spending an hour getting bait compared to 5 minutes.  The tarpon action has been good a lot of fish in the 30 to 60 lb range with few big girls still around here and there.  Most mornings the action starts to slow down after 9:30 or so, so again the earlier start helps there too.  Often though in the afternoon the tarpon can start biting again, in the noon to 2:00 range I’ve been having luck with them too.  I’ve been finding plenty of pilchards near the gulf and while we chum and net those, we are often catching nice snappers and trout.  If the pilchards are good then we are usually going snook fishing which has been very good.  Lots of small and medium snook, with a few large ones mixed in make for a great fight on light tackle.  Redfish are sometimes mixed in though for the most part they are up in the super skinny water this time of year.  There has been some permit out on the gulf wrecks as well as goliath groupers and cobias.  On the slick calm days that is often a good option too.  If you wanting to go fishing this summer just drop me an email, this is still a great time of year to come down and if you work hard at it the fishing is anything but slow!

Capt. Rick Stanczyk