Summer is almost over but it is still hotter that Hades down here. September is probably the most uncomfortable month for me. I love the heat but after several months of it and the harsh sun I’m kinda over it and ready for some cooler weather.
Unfortunately for me this has been another weird summer. I only got out to dive the two days of the mini lobster season which was hard work this year and fished only a couple days as well.
Hopefully by the time this is published I will have had a few more days in and on the water.
So there’s some really cool things happening on the flats this time of the year. The tides now are at the extremes for the year.
Around the full and new moons we will experience extremely low low tides, well into the negatives.
These tides are great for chasing tailing bonefish. The normally shallow flats will be completely exposed, providing hours of shallow water fun. And if I can plan it out right and the wind cooperates, I can follow the low incoming tide from the ocean up into the gulf.
The other extreme of the tides are the king tides, which are the highest tides of the year. Considering the average high tide for Key West is about 1.6 feet above the MLLW (thanks Grok), king tides can be as high as 2.5 feet.
Include environmental factors and you can add a couple more inches. That’s a lot of water.
These peak high tides will inundate the island leaving standing saltwater along many of the streets close to the edge of Key West.
The water will come up through storm drains and over boat ramps. I shake my head at people driving their nice cars through saltwater.
On the flats however, this can be too much water and it can get really hard to fish sometimes.
I will usually fish mangroves for baby tarpon or go way back into areas where there is some form of a barrier that may block or steer fish along to up my odds of finding some action. These barriers can be mangrove islands, high sand bars or shorelines.
As far as fishing the flats goes, it’s still mainly bonefish, tarpon and permit I am targeting. Just need to play the tides and the weather to be successful.
As a bad example, I ran a trip in early August. The forecast was for 5-10 mph winds but cloudy skies. So I planned to fish for rolling tarpon in the backcountry.
As I headed out and looked around sure enough it was cloudy but per usual a bit windier than stated.
Surprisingly we still had some really low water inside of the gulf side flats. Great opportunity to find some tailing or waking bonefish. We fished a couple flats to find only a couple of mystery wakes, nothing concrete and didn’t spook anything.
As the tide rose I started to fish some channel and basin edges with some sand to hopefully find either bonefish in the sand or tarpon rolling along the edge, found neither.
It was only a half day trip and my frustration level was peaking. To make matters worse I could see back to the west it was cloud free.
Now I’m peeved because I wanted to fish down to the west but with a big high tide and clouds it would have been really hard at best. And to pick up a run west didn’t make sense in the time we had as it would have taken me 30-45 minutes to get where I wanted to go.
Thankfully my client that day was someone I fished with a few times and we have had great days. With the rising water, poor visibility and lack of life we cut our losses and called it a day.
Most days on the flats fishing is pretty consistent. I won’t say it’s easy though some days are ridiculously so, but we get our shots and enjoy the day.
Then every once in a while we’ll have a day like I just had and I want to tear my hair out. Make decisions to give us the best opportunity at the time and it all goes pear shaped. It’s all part of this game I really love.
Enjoy the remainder of summer. Winter will be here soon and we’ll be complaining how cold it is!
In the meantime I hope for all of us we have quiet hurricane season and no major storms bothering anyone.
Capt. Mike Bartlett
