Contributing Writer
Capt. Mike Bartlett
Key West Fishing Charters
It’s hotter that Hades down here still. I mean it is summer, it’s supposed to be hot. Lately we’ve had some stronger easterly breezes which is nice but it still feels like stepping into a hot oven when I go outside. It just hot air moving around carrying that lovely aroma of rotting sea weed from the beaches!
Unfortunately, due to Saharan dust and dry air we have had no afternoon showers to keep the water temperatures in check and that is contributing to this ungodly heat we have all day and night. The fortunate side to the dust and the El Niño effect is we have not had any tropical systems to deal with yet. The water is so hot though that if something does spin up or push through it may get really tropical. For now we are in the clear.
As I stated our water is very hot and has been since mid May. In my 27 years of living here and working on the water, I can’t recall a time when water temperatures were 90 degrees in the morning and this is in June and July. What’s it going to be like now that we are in August/September when generally our water is at it’s hottest. We really need a tropical wave or low pressure system to dump a bunch of rain on the entire area to cool things down for a bit.
On the bright side though, fishing for me has been awesome. I have been having a blast wth baby tarpon. They certainly don’t seem to care about the hot water. In fact, on the flat calm days the baby tarpon have been very plentiful taking advantage of food sources that can’t tolerate the oxygen depleted, hot water.
Smaller baitfish, shrimp and juvenile fish struggle in these conditions, easy pickin’s for baby tarpon. Easy pickin’s for my anglers when I run into it.
Then we have sargassum blooming like crazy on the ocean side and in Lakes Passage. This just adds another element to deal with on a daily basis. I’m fortunate that my motor is really good about not picking up the grass and overheating, but it’s still a nightmare to have to run through large patches that I can’t get around.
Never know what might be floating around in the grass to make a mess of things. Oh yeah, it stinks to the high heavens the sargassum that gets blown on to the “beaches” and ferments in the hot sun all day. I imagine the cleanup crews can’t keep up with it there’s that much.
But this is life in the Florida Keys. It’s not the first time we have had hot and dry summers and it won’t be the last. We learn to roll with what Mother Nature deals us and we make the best of it cause there ain’t nothing we can do about it. And remember this too shall pass. Next summer it will be something completely different.
I have also been doing really well finding bonefish. I remember a few years ago we had a somewhat similar summer and I had three flats I fished everyday for bonefish. It was the only place I could find them reliably. I was finding tailers mid afternoon on falling tides with water temps hitting 92 degrees. Normally I would have thought no way we see anything alive in that hot water, but there they were doing their thing.
I’ve seen this at the other extreme in the winter when the water is really cold and would never expect to see a bonefish and yet there they are doing their thing. My educated guess that I came up with a few years ago is that these fish live here. After a prolonged period of the water being too hot or too cold, all the water gets hot or cold and these fish adapt and go about their lives.
I don’t know at what point the hot or cold water has damaging effects on their systems but from my experience it must be below 63 degrees and above 92 degrees.
There’s probably a rate of change aspect to this as well. Sudden sharp drops or rises in temperature may have more of an affect than a gradual one.
That’s about it for now. Summers on the flats in Key West are pretty simple. It’s all about baby tarpon and bonefish with hopefully some permit thrown in just for fun. Most days it’s pretty easy, that’s what I love about the summer months, but there can be challenging days when it’s windy and cloudy.
Hopefully we get a tropical system soon, nothing major, just some stiff breezes and lots of rain, enough to drop our water temperatures back down to 80-85 degrees. Stay cool!
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Capt. Mike Bartlett
