What an awesome experience in a beautiful land! Stayed in a townhouse on a canal in Marathon and couldn’t have had a better location! Aside from a couple windy days and a few quick morning rain showers the weather was great! We swam our azzes off for a few lobster each day learning more and more as we went. Lots of work for a wonderful tasty reward! Did a little reef fishing and tried for some tarpon a couple of nights as well. Even hooked up with a some small dock savvy tarpon each night that were hard to entice to bite! A few of them slipped up and bit but after a few jumps and head shakes they were gone! My friend did manage to get one to the boat and I haven’t heard the end of that yet, and probably never will! I will have to go back and catch me a Snook and a Tarpon, but not during lobster season! This may turn into an annual thing for us since we had such a blast! Here are a few pics of the trip.
Nice job on the snapper. The Keys are awesome! We go every year. It gets a little crazy at the opening of lobster season. Gotta watch your 6 when towing peeps.
Was a flippin’ blast!! Not sure about the big sharks but did see a few 3 footers or so and a couple big eel in the bigger cracks and structure, that will make you blow some bubbles when under water!!
quote:Originally posted by fshunman
Nice job on the snapper. The Keys are awesome! We go every year. It gets a little crazy at the opening of lobster season. Gotta watch your 6 when towing peeps.
Thanks man, we found em for a few hours and yea you’re right, it was pretty much a zoo out there, we took every extra precaution we could! Loooooooots of swimming involved in lobstering worth it though!!
Fishing Nerd
“you win some, you lose some…but nothing beats getting some!”
Back in the 70s a friend introduced me to shrimping and lobstering in the Largo area after dark. He was an old coal miner from Scranton Pa. He mounted sealed beam headlights in hardhats with motorcycle batteries strapped to our backs. We’d pole the shallows scooping with dip nets in Tarpon Basin in a 12 ft Starcraft looking for the telltale brilliant orange glow of eyes in the darkness. Always did well. Always saw amazing and surprising sights. Never took more than needed for a meal or two.
Giacommin, they do something very similar to that these days as well. With a ‘gigging’ light set up and a ‘bully’ net (hoop net on a long handle bent to 90 degrees) you ease through the shallows near the structure and when you see a bug you stamp the net down on them and snatch em up! We tried this ourselves the last night we were there but the wind had the water stirred up and visibility was minimal. We goose-egged lol. Was still had a good time trying! We are already planning another trip back!
Northchucky, it was awesome! Can’t wait to do make the trip again!
Fishing Nerd
“you win some, you lose some…but nothing beats getting some!”
Heck yeah! Got to love getting them bugs! Did you do some patch fishing and chumming for yellow tail and b-liners? Fishing the keys is a blast! Jealous.
Heck yeah! Got to love getting them bugs! Did you do some patch fishing and chumming for yellow tail and b-liners? Fishing the keys is a blast! Jealous.
Yessir, sure did!
It definitely wasn’t my last trip there!
Fishing Nerd
“you win some, you lose some…but nothing beats getting some!”
Was down in Islamorada this past weekend. Didn’t get to do the lobster thing but saw people everywhere doing it, looks like a good time, next trip!! I did take a guided fishing trip up in the Everglades and caught my first snook OTF! Hell of a fun fish to catch! Love the Keys wouldn’t mind ending up there one day. We got round trip tickets to Ft. Lauderdale for $106.00 a piece, $212.00 total. 2 hour drive down, will be doing that more often at that price.
We purchased a few weeks out. The only catch, if you can call it a catch,for that cheap fare there was only one flight time out 1:30PM on Friday and the return was at 1:30PM Monday. Only a 2.5 hour drive from Ft. Lauderdale to Islamorada.
We will be making more of those weekend trips for sure!
Not to hijack this thread at all. But I love the Keys, been there twice this year already, and will likely head down again in a few weeks… If I could find work, I’d live there and fish my life away. The diversity is amazing.
Also, caught my first tarpon down there this spring. Also tons of fun kayaking down there on a later trip. That produced mostly large mangroves and a ton of small cuda. Spooked a bunch of huge tarpon, but didn’t do well. We did deal with consistent gale force winds both day and night which prevented fishing anything other than protected coves.
Here’s some photos I took from the trips… look familiar?
PS. No I don’t own that place, just have a great friend who does
worth it though!!
