key west florida Fishing Report 2024

Sep. 8

We woke up this morning on the drift. I heard Tommy doing the stop and go on his watch early in the morning meaning he was seeing schools. He woke the rest of us up bright and early and it didn't take too long before we started hooking fish. They were the 15-18 pound bluefin and they weren't biting as well as you'd think they would judging by all the fish around the boat. We kept drifting though trying the patient mode. It's a lot easier to be patient with non biting fish when the other boats aren't getting stops. After a while and a few handfuls of BFT we gave up on these fish and went searching for some new ones. It took a while but around lunch time we found a nice big fat kelp and it was an aquarium underneath. Good viewing and catching on lot's of different fish from small throwback yellowtail to small tuna and tuna up to 32 pounds and lots of dorado. Yes it's that time of year. The water warmed up considerably in the last week or so and with that came schools of yellowfin and now the dorado in numbers. We'll take um. Crowd pleaser's is what they are and you know us, we like to please crowds. After a couple hours fishing there we went searching for something new unsuccessfully so we ended up back on our kelp and caught some more dorado and a few more tuna. We're now headed for the yellowtail grounds and everyone is fat and happy and we're planning on some good pulling on big yellows tomorrow.

I ate the escolar again substituting it for the prime rib in the fajitas we had for lunch today. It was smooth sailing John and I mean that in a good way. No problems down there. The fish isn't the best fish in the ocean. The flavor is great though the texture is a bit soft. Opening day for pro football so I'll leave you with this. Go Chargers! Let's do some competing this year. My Pad's couldn't do it so now it's up to you guys. Come on now!

Wednesday, July 25th, 2012

Hello everybody. Good times this morning on the sea anchor. Biting bluefin tuna with a smattering of nice yellowtail to start off our day made breakfast taste that much better for everyone who attended the meal call. A half pound breakfast burrito tastes just a little better after pulling on fish for a couple hours after the sunrises. Anyhow, we had another decent day today of catching bluefin and yellowfin, mostly on blind jig strikes, and shaking off "neck-tie" yellowtail and dorado's to fill in the gaps when the tuna had their noses in the mud. For the most part, their noses stayed in that mud but when they did pop up, we made the most of it with some quality tuna fish.

Another solid day made for the decision to head coastal and see if we can't find us some yellowtail's with some size to them. We'll give this offshore scene another try later but for now, we're going to get out of the wind for a bit and give the anglers a change of scenery. We'll fill you in on our day tomorrow evening. Take care.

Hi Gang

There are now an even 50 of you on this update list plus 8 of our P.R. guys. Hopefully I will have it figured out so I can also send it from the boat starting next Friday when I get back on. It will be a different email address and going through the Sat phone address, so don't send me large files to the boat. Anyways, lets get at it.

Yesterday only one boat remained in the hot area in some pretty crappy weather, and to his credit he kicked the heck out of the bluefin and yellowfin. Equal scores of limits for each. Drew will be there early afternoon. The weather is beautiful again. And as we know these tunas REALLY want to bite when the weather lays down. I'll send you out an update when I talk to him this afternoon. Hope you're having a fun Sunday.

Tommy

Captain Andrew Viola checked in this morning at 8:59 PM with an audio update from the Pacifica out of Seaforth Sportfishing in Mission Bay, CA.  We have been drifting for an hour and have put together a good score so far.  We have 62 Yellowfin Tuna and 4 Bluefin Tuna.  We are still drifting with fish around the boat.

We have a 1.5 day trip departing on Wednesday night.  We also have a full day trip on Sunday.  Come out fishing on the Pacifica!!!!

Aug. 14
 OK.  So once again, we were one of the lucky boats today.  Two days in a row, we're carrying the horseshoe.  We had arguably our best stop of the year this morning.  A month ago we had a day where we caught a larger quantity of yellowfin than we caught today and ultimately we caught more tonnage that day, but the quality/quantity of these yellowfin this morning were second to none in 2015.  Holy Toledo.  Same grade as yesterday.  About a 25 pound average.  One fish hold down.  We feel blessed.  It was not for everyone today unfortunately but fortunately we were one of the lucky ones.

 The afternoon stunk for us though.  It got very crowded in the zones that had fish and it made it tough to stay in those zones.  We kept wanting to leave but we wouldn't see anything when we did so we would end up back in the crowd and that fish wouldn't bite well.  It was a long afternoon but much easier to handle with one full well on board already.

 The weather was great.  Just like San Diego weather because that's where we were.  Tomorrow we're going to be concentrating on bluefin tuna.  We've caught 18 of them the last couple days and they are beautiful.  We want some more.  The boats that fished it this morning were not happy about it but we're hoping it was an off day today and they want to float tomorrow.  Timing is everything and so far our timing has been right on.  Let's keep this ball rolling.
    

18 yellowfin tuna 13 skipjack. Unfortunately all of the fish we found were in the vicinity of bait. Tuna that have not eaten for a few hours are much easier to catch than tuna that are gorging themselves on anchovies.

44 yellowtail 17 barracuda 1 bonito. One stop made our day.