MARATHON, Florida Keys — Fishing at night has been the ticket.  You beat the heat and the snappers are swarming.  We headed out to reef the past two days and looked for some good marks in 35-45 feet of water and threw the hook.  An hour after dark the bite is on.

I started to fish with a half oz. of lead on my knocker rig and as the night progressed we ended up using a 1/8 oz. sinker.  I didn’t switch because of the slowing current, as a matter of fact the current picked up.  It is almost free lining, keeping the bait down but not on the bottom.  Every once in a while I will hold the line and the bait will rise up and then I feed it back, waiting for the bite.

Last year I cast-netted 180 quarts of sardines, which I am still using.  I saved the baits all year so that I would have them for the summer months of nighttime mangrove fishing.  Sardines are perfect bait for the snappers because of their size and the amount of oil in them.  They don’t stay on the hook real good but they are definitely preferred bait by the mangroves.

Each night we were able to capture a few other species other than mangroves.  Almost every night we have caught a legal red grouper and one night we caught a small cubera about 10 pounds and the other night we caught a few mutton snappers around 8 pounds.

The current has been good, in the west-bound direction.  It doesn’t take long for the bait to show up so don’t forget the cast net.  I will switch back and forth from the sardine to pilchard and I mainly chop up the pilchards into chunks and chum with them, but if you don’t have sardines they will work fine.

Good luck and keep only what you can use — conservation starts with us.