Barracuda and Jacks

After another week of wind and cool weather the winds again turned toward south and the temperatures rose ahead of the next cold front that pushed through the Keys last night.  I fished with Dino and his wife Courtney from Naples, FL yesterday and the pre-frontal bite was on.  We started out a little slow in the morning but as the day progressed and the tide pushed in, fishing got better.  We found plenty of barracudas but we had some bad luck with a bite-off and a couple of complete misses.  We found a few permit, though I thought we would have seen more, getting pretty good casts off to two of them which unfortunately resulted in spooked fish.

Toward the end of the trip I finally found some sting rays that had jacks following them, thanks to my buddy Capt. Peter Heydon for the heads-up.  Dino had several shots and in the end got three jacks to the boat the largest about 10 pounds.  We stayed out an extra hour, the weather was good and I really wanted get Dino another shot at a permit or barracuda.  He mad some really good casts to fish, he just had a little bad luck.  I pushed along the last flat of the day not seeing anything until almost the very end when we drifted over a barracuda that shot out from under the boat.  Luckily the cuda stopped and again Dino made a good cast.  This time the cuda did what a cuda is supposed to do and ate the tube lure.  A few minutes later Dino has his first ever barracuda to the boat, a chunky 15 pound barracuda.  We'll get that permit next trip.

Captain Mike Bartlett http://www.keywestflats.net/