MARATHON, Florida Keys – It is starting to look like spring, as this week’s tides have been extremely low.  The temperature has been a little cooler than normal, which hasn’t been good for our tourist population.  This week’s full moon made the fishing a little interesting.

The yellowtails on the reef are still sluggish, but the mangroves that have been on the patches have been day savers.  Speaking of day savers the kingfish which are most often overlooked can give your light tackle a good run for it’s money.  Drag screaming off of a reel gets every fisherman’s blood flowing.  These toothy critters love this weather and as the water cleared up the bite was really on.  Kingfish rely on their great eyesight to eat.  They have very large eyes for their size.  Kingfish have a torpedo shaped body, which allows them to have incredible acceleration to surprise its prey.  One of the many reasons I love to fish for kings is their ability to launch themselves out of the water and land directly on your bait.  Sometimes kingfish can jump twenty feet in the air when they attack bait on the surface.  These supersonic jet –like predators can eat very large baits, as they will cut larger baits down to size as they shred apiece off on every pass.  You can target these fish on deeper wrecks from 125-180 feet of water.  If there are barracudas around the wreck the kings will stay further off the wreck so not to be eaten themselves.  You can troll for them with live or dead bait along the edge of the reef or anchor up and chunk for them as well.  When you’re anchored up try the kite with a large bait and some flatlines with live baits for the best results.  They will readily eat a spoon or jig retrieved very fast.  These fish are triggered to attack by fast moving action.

Sail fishing has been a little on the boring side.  The current still hasn’t been all that great and this eddy of no current was shortly interrupted for a few days as we did experience some current this week.  The bite for sails has been slow all the way up to Miami.  When we get some current we will see the action pick back up.  There were a few dolphin caught along the reef this week, nothing of any size or numbers but a few is better than none.  I heard from one of my friends that a large school of schoolies cam by their boat, but they were too small to keep.  If I had to go offshore this upcoming week I would venture out to the humps where the action has been with tuna and amberjacks.  The super large jacks have held up residence on the hump and so has many large sharks too.  The jacks out there have been averaging 65-80 pounds with some 100 pounders being caught too.

For the up coming week, it looks like we are going to experience cooler waters only in front of Marathon and as far out as 30 miles, but later in the week it will be pushed out by the warm water eddy and the warm water looks like it will push almost to the reef.  When we loose the cooler water the Upper Keys will get it for a few days until it pushes around the corner to Miami.  Look for warm water East or West till Thursday and then we should have some current and warm water for a few days until a new eddy of cold water will plague us once again.  All of this cooler water is being pushed by the warm water out of the Gulf of Mexico and creating a Ying and a Yang mixture of cold and warm water along the Keys.  This warm water is swirling the cold water up the coast and this is why we will be experiencing these changes of water temperatures.

I am counting the days till the dolphin run, but I am predicting that it won’t be until the end of April or the beginning of May before we see any major runs, but I hope I am wrong.  This was the trend last year, and the only way that we will see the dolphin return early is if we experience some global warming, hahahaha, just kidding, but seriously, we need the warm water for the dolphin to show up early.  And everyone hated El Nino, but I think that’s why we had loads of dolphin from March to October.  I had amazing Octobers in the past when the water stayed warm late in the season.  Keep your eyes peeled for birds working anywhere near the warm water for dolphin.  Good luck out there.

Tags: amberjack fishing, Capt. Dave Schugar, dolphin fishing, florida humps fishing, Florida Keys Fishing, florida keys fishing charter, king fish fishing, kingfish fishing, Marathon fishing, sail fish fishing, sailfish fishing, sharks, Sweet E'Nuf Charters, tuna fishing, yellowtail snapper fishing

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 28th, 2010 at 8:02 pm and is filed under Offshore Fishing Report. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.