2/8/17 February Florida Keys Backcountry Fishing

Great day again today I had Dan who fished with me last week and his buddies Dave and Mike.  It was glass calm and a gorgeous day.  We found a bunch of pilchards as we were pulling out of the dock and blacked the well out… great way to start!  We hit the gulf and caught the mackerels and snappers pretty well.  It wasn’t super red hot and took a bit of work, but caught probably 16 or 18 macks and some snappers.  The tide was weak, with clear water and flat calm conditions, can make the mackerels a little tricky.  After that we hit the channels to chunk up some dead bait and fish the big rods.  We found some tarpon and other big critters.  We caught a few sharks and a tarpon right off the bat, a nice 80 lb fish!  After that we caught a big ‘mud marlin’ sawfish, and had a couple others break us off under the boat.  Then we caught some more sharks, tried moving around to get back on the tarpon but they were being finicky at this point.  But was very glad to get one!  We then hit the shorelines of the mainland to try for a few snook to end the day.  The first stop was not very good but we did catch a nice jumbo trout.  The second stop however we caught about 5 nice snook and lost a couple others.  It was a great way to end the day and yes it’s very nice when everything you try to do on a fishing trip ends up working out!

Capt. Rick Stanczyk

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