Another month has passed here at Bud n' Mary's marina in Islamorada, Florida Keys! Business is slowing down as we are hitting "off season" with the kids going to back to school and summer travel coming to an end. We have had both some great days offshore as well as some slow ones the last couple of weeks. Mahi and Blackfin tuna have still been the main target offshore. The mahi bite has been day to day, with a handful of incredbile catch with nice size fish from 10 - 20 lbs, but then there was a few really slow days right next to the good ones. The next month I believe we will see mahi caught, but it is getting to the time of year where it won't be as consistent as early summer. The Fall blackfin tuna bite is starting off in full swing right now too! They are on almost all of the humps, but the sharks are on some of them too! A few days the sharks were so aggresive it was hard to get a tuna past them, but if you were patient you could put a nice catch together!
Our snowy grouper and blueline tilefish season just came to an end the last day of August, but we saw a of each species caught the last week of season. It will re open in May 2019. We have had quite a bit of wind the last few days, so some boats have just been staying on the reef where it was a little calmer. The hot mangrove snapper bite we saw all summer is slowing down as expected, but there is still some around for dinner. The yellowtails have been biting most days and there's been a few kingfish on the reef.
Way offshore the swordfish bite has been on and off like it was all summer, but we did have a few really good days. Two different trips we caught 3 fish, two trips we had two fish, and two trips with one fish. Of course we had a couple trips with 0 fish as well. One of the fish we caught was an absolute beast that weighed in at 423 lbs!!! We have released half of the recent fish and kept half. The next couple of months are as good as any for a chance to get a swordfish off Islamroada, so if it's on your bucket list keep that in mind!
Give the marina office a call at 305 664 2461 when you're ready to book your next Islamorada Fishing trip! Remember we have off season rates on our hotel rooms and houseboats if you want to stay on property to be close to the boats!!
Tight Lines
Capt. Nick Stanczyk
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