It’s the middle of summer and the Florida Keys are boiling, as usual!! It’s hot out there on the water for sure, not nearly as bad as on land though, oof. I call it sweatin’ season cause I’m sweaty from the moment I get out of bed until I shower up and cool down in the evening. Heck, I’m sweatin’ right now typing this sitting in front of the air conditioner.
Kidding... it’s not that bad at the moment. We only have window units and the late afternoons have been rough inside. That is when the sun decides to make an appearance and bake the west side of our place. With the air conditioners on full blast and fans running there’s still a couple of hot zones where we cook our meals.
As uncomfortable as the summer months may be, I absolutely love being on and in the water now. This is my favorite part of the year to be fishing flats, no worries whatsoever about cold water. This is by far the best time of the year to fish for bonefish, they are literally everywhere. As long as the conditions are good and I can see in the water it’s easy peasy.
The best though is a morning, low incoming tide coming off a negative low tide. Great opportunities to find tailing bonefish especially if it’s flat calm. Some of the bigger flats I like pole I will see multiple schools of bonefish working the shallows, making wakes as they move along feeding off the bottom. This is also very challenging as bonefish in super skinny water can be very skiddish and will spook easily from the slightest disturbance.
I ran into a thing with one of my long time clients back in June that I haven’t seen in many years. Well, I also haven’t fished the area in a long time either as it is fairly long run. This particular client has fished with me for 15-20 years now and all he wants is permit on fly. Which is great for me cause permit are my favorite and I love chasing them with a fly rod even though they can be a complete pain in the backside!!
My client spends a few weeks here every year between February and March and he will book several days with me spread out over that time. Over the years we have had many great days, slow days and years when it has either been really cold or really windy and sometimes both during his entire visit.
This year he wasn’t able to make his usual trip in February but was able to come to Key West in June…finally!!! I’ve begged him for years to come down in the summer, it’s so much different than in the winter.
First 2 days I did pretty much the usual stuff, had some fun with bonefish and cast to a few tarpon, but permit basically eluded us. Both our frustration levels were high, we could do this in February and not be sweatin’ bullets.
Day three I decided screw it, I’m going way up east where I haven’t fished in a long time. My plan was to follow the outgoing tide down the flat to the Gulf edge where there is a lot of sand and a hard rocky ledge. In the past I would find permit tailing on that hard bottom and a few times found schools over the sandy bottom.
Fortunately, the gamble paid off and we encounter a very large school of permit cruising over the sandy bottom. They proved to be a little difficult to get set up on coming just close enough to get a cast almost there. But the stars aligned as did the sun and wind and the third school we encountered marched right in on us. He was able to get his fly next to the school and one came right out and ate his fly, easy as that!!
This was one of the most exciting and stressful moments for me in a long time. I was so happy for my client to finally hook up after years of bad luck and near misses but now we have to land this permit and he was heading straight for the rocks, not good.
I got on the motor to stay close to the fish and after a short while and him not breaking us off in the rocks we got our hands on him and snapped a few pics before releasing him back into the wild.
Happy Day!!
I tell this story because for years and years I have harped on about how good the fishing is here in the summer and that it is my favorite time of year to be fishing the flats. This day illustrates what I’ve been trying to convey. This schooling up of permit like this is primarily a summer time thing. I do see them schooled up at other times, but this is different.
The smallest school of permit we encountered this day was about 30 fish. We saw about 6 schools of permit with a couple having 50-60 fish. So the odds of getting one on fly are about as good as they are gonna get when you can encounter many large schools of permit.
Oh yeah, there’s also plenty of tarpon and bonefish around too, so summer is also a great opportunity to get a flats grand slam!!!
It’s hurricane season, hope it’s a quiet one for us. We certainly deserve it.
Capt. Mike Bartlett
