I’m heading down to the florida keys and I’m looking for some good places to go kayak fishing. Can anyone help?
I spent 2 weeks down there kayaking in March. It was awesome. I fished mainly in the lower keys and Key West. Caught a bunch of baby tarpon and jacks, though not from the yak. Could have gotten then from the yak, but a dock was available and it was dark out. Most of my yakking was done off of Sugar Loaf and Big Pine Key. You should look into getting one of the charts available in tackle shops down there. I targeted drop offs. Fishing around mangroves with small streamers and shrimp produced mangrove snappers, biggest was 14 inches.
I trolled around with big Rapalas everywhere for Cuda, which are definitely the easiest big fish to catch IMO.
Let me know if you need any more info.
There is no normal life, there’s just life.
Tarpon 140
Knot the Reel World Fly Fishing LLC
Thanks for the response. What type of streamers did you use? Were you using live or DOA shrimp? I’m bringing both my fly rod and my spinning rod.
Live shrimp for the mangrove snappers but they also took a small streamer called “Norm’s Crystal Shminnow.” Basically white ostrich and some flash for the tail and a pearl or white crystal chenille body. The tarpon and jacks that I caught around lighted docks ate shrimp gurglers, traditional keys streamer flies and a few other random minnow like creations. Presentation was very important with them, keep trying different stripping patterns to see what they respond to. Some fish liked it slow, some fast. Also, the fish seemed to get used to the flies after a few fish got hooked on a certain pattern so I would switch it up to get their attention.
There is no normal life, there’s just life.
Tarpon 140
Knot the Reel World Fly Fishing LLC
I just made a reservation for December 22-29th, to go down with the Yaks. Planning to stay near Islamorada. Anyone else with any fishing info or “must sees” for that area?
Thanks in advance!