1/5/19 Full Day Backcountry Florida Keys Fishing in January

Fun day with Vito and John in the backcountry. The winds were kicking pretty good out of the west, and swung more north by the afternoon as we have a cold front coming in. Dropping back into the 60s tonight which will be refreshing. Fishing was pretty good. We found some redfish early on with the hard negative tide we had. We had to work around for them, pick and move, but all in all a decent bite we probably ended up with 20 or so in the first couple hours, plus some jack crevelle and ladyfish mixed in. As the tide bottomed out, we worked our way back to the creeks and canals of cape sable. It was a little bit of a beater getting their with some of the big swells coming off the gulf, but we made it no problem. Fishing was OK here too, no spots super red hot but we moved around several times and picked a few fish in each spot. The first stop Vito hooked a real nice snook that we lost on our biggest shrimp we had – funny as the same thing happened a couple days ago in a nearby spot the biggest snook we got on our biggest shrimp. I didn’t think we’d get another shot, but I put another good size shrimp on and he casted in the same area and boom we hooked another nice one! This one didn’t get away. It was a nice 30 incher. As I said we picked a few more fish in the next several spots mostly snook and redfish, but a few trout mixed in as well. After that we went and were going to try some high tide spots up on the flats, as the water was just getting high enough for the last hour of our fishing. But not much luck there many of the spots were total mud holes with the hard west wind and incoming tide we had rolling now. We bailed and caught a few snapper on the way home and called it a day! All in all though lots of fun, and I’ll be back at it tomorrow. Should be nicer with more of a north wind and a cool down, hopefully some of our creek fishing turns on hot with drum and snook!

Capt. Rick Stanczyk
Instagram: @richardstanczyk
Facebook: Islamorada Tarpon Fishing

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