Fishing Key West with
Captain Mike Bartlett
August 2024
Yes, the dog days of summer are upon us. Not much more to add from my previous articles so this will be short and sweet so you can get on with your day.
As far as the flats around Key West are concerned, it’s more of the same. Hope for flat calm mornings to fish the high rollers (tarpon) and sight fish for bonefish and permit throughout the morning and into the early afternoon. Basically just trying to follow the tides around and not die from heat stroke!!
The main thing really throughout the summer, especially in the mornings, is looking for bait balls. If I can find the bait balls, I will usually find tarpon close by working through and around the bait.
There are mainly two species of baitfish I find around the flats: pilchards and glass minnows. Some days the bait balls are massive and so thick and packed together they create these moving black masses. With that much bait, there is usually a few other fish around eating them up. Mainly tarpon but I have caught and seen permit, bonefish, mutton snappers and of course barracudas and sharks around the bait balls.
Much like some of the other tarpon situations I have written about in the past, this too seems to be a morning event. Some of that has to do with the tides. During an incoming tide the will eventually end up in the mangroves until the outgoing tide forces them back out. So I still like calm conditions so we can find rollers, otherwise I can usually see them as they push through the bait.
After some fun with the poons it’s off to fish for bonefish and permit. We are now in that time of the year when tides are more extreme on the low and high ends. I love fishing for tailing bonefish and we get them throughout the day and during both falling and rising tides. The water level just needs to be low enough so their tails will stick up, if not, I will often find them waking across the flats. Otherwise I am just fishing the areas where I can see them easily and have good probabilities of also finding permit.
August is usually a pretty quiet month for me business wise, so hoping for some nice days when I don’t have trips so I can go and enjoy the water from the pointy end of my skiff. Lobster season will be starting up in the beginning of August so hopefully I can get a few days in the water as well.
That about sums it up for this month. Do a little fishing and diving, run a few trips and try to stay cool. So far the tropics have been pretty quiet with one big storm so far. Let’s hope it stays that way.
Capt. Mike Bartlett
www.facebook.com/CaptMikeBartlett