Coming off of an exciting Thanksgiving holiday week I have seen the changes we have been waiting for. The air is cool, the water is clear and waves of new fish and opportunities arrive with each passing cold front. I’m happy to report that we have seen some of the nicest weather of the year sprinkled in between these first few cold fronts. It is all about timing. Not every trip in December will give us perfect weather or conditions for what you want to do, but this time of year we have more options to adjust our plan on. If your trip does land on some of these perfect days it is magical out there. December and January bookings, please read all of this.

First let me address Christmas week. I have plenty of openings and that is unusual. I expect a wave of bookings to flood in last minute. Sure, that is fine and I will be prepared. Better way to approach your trip is to book it now so you get the preferred morning slot. Also, the more advanced notice I have, the more I can fine tune a plan for your trip. I already know I will have days where I finish 1 trip and am ready to go home and another group will show up, having booked an afternoon trip 30 minutes prior. I will run that trip, No, it won’t be like the morning trip. I manage a million variables for each trip and have a limited finite set of resources needed to pull of any trip successfully. I am 90% unlikely to have the bait I need for trip number 2 in that scenario. However, if I know I have 2 trips a day, a will have the resources staged. The more you communicate with me and use my website as a resource for information, the more smoothly each trip goes. Just a friendly reminder; I do not answer my phone on my boat when I am with customers. I am working. I am very busy. My hands are wet. My charter does not stop for a ringing phone. I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.

In the water conditions have been nothing short of amazing since before Thanksgiving week. I had only 1 snorkel trip on the books and that was outstanding. My customers got to swim with a sea turtle that didn’t mind them tagging along. That does not happen very often. Water has been crystal clear with the reef water hovering around the 75 degree area. I say this because our nearshore water temps are 64. All that water mixes somewhere and tides and wind direction pushes that mix around, so it varies. I highly recommend renting a wetsuit from Captain Hooks Marina. I think it’s around $10-12 per person. However nice it is now, our weather changes quickly and radically this month. It’s all about the timing of the cold fronts. Not every snorkel only trip may operate as planned. If it sucks for snorkeling, we will turn it into a 2 hour fishing trip. It’s just what I have to do to protect my income and manage losses.

Fishing has been tough. Unusually tough because of that clear water. I think we are in the longest stretch of clear water that I have seen in many years, From shallow nearshore reefs to the deep reef it has been gorgeous water. Great for snorkeling, not great for fishing. On the deep reef where we do the majority of our fishing, we like our wind and current flow going the same direction and have a little sediment in the water to disguise our presentations. We have had tide completely against the wind for weeks making our fishing style nearly impossible. With any cold front we could see the wind kick up some silt and color our water again, making fishing better.

For my family fishing trips we have been targeting the shallow close to shore reefs. These reefs fire up this time of year and some great catches can come from these tiny spots, With our clear water situation our success has come from moving often to stay on dumb fish. It would take a a full day to explain how smart our fish are here in the Keys. The short version of this story is they know what we are doing and after 20 minutes of fishing, we are no longer fooling the fish we want to catch. If your presentations are not good and you play the small fish game, our target fish are done with us in 10 minutes. One of my many challenges is to teach you what you need to do before you teach the fish what we are doing. That’s the difference between an angler and someone who is fishing. Good listeners are great fish catchers!

The deep wrecks locates 6 miles or so offshore have been the go to lately. Fishing 150′ to 250′ gives us a little advantage using the depth to conceal our tackle. There has been quite a bit of extra boat traffic out there because of the difficult conditions on the reef. Wreck fishing isn’t the same as reef fishing. Actually, it’s pretty boring much of the time. We are targeting a few big fish instead of dozens of smaller fish. There is more work involved, there is more responsibility of setting lines properly and in a timely manner and more strength and endurance is needed to pull big fish from depth and away from aggressive sharks. Slow doesn’t work or win out here. It’s not for everyone. Realistically I need 2 anglers that can execute tasks and operate fairly independently as I run the boat and set the drift.

Further offshore there has been no activity for me. I have not seen any reports. 27 miles out there should be some blackfin tuna on the humps. Late November reports were sharks, sharks and more sharks eating much of what was hooked. Those days can be pretty frustration. This time of year there are not many other targets out there to switch plans. Closer back to the reef we have seen some pushes of sailfish come through. By pushes, I mean some days a trickle of migrating fish swim down the reef in search of food on their way to somewhere else. Some days there are none. I see people get excited about this fishery, but most don’t know what sailfishing is. Sailfish like crappy rough days. I’ll be in the tower driving around looking for birds and bait. SO will the other boats. Something pops up, all the boats rush to it and attack pitching live baits to a shadow darting around. It can be excessively hectic at times. Not my style of fishing and difficult to execute because properly hooking a live bait, balancing on a moving boat running down a fish and making a precise cast to a darting sailfish, sometimes in a very competitive scenario requires skill sets and knowledge the majority of my charter clients do not have. We have hooked 4 sailfish this year in ideal conditions and have lost them all. Why? Most people have never hooked a fish that can swim 50mph. I’m sure we will get a few to the boat, but it’s not something I put much time into. It’s a lot of time, work and expense to set up a cage match between scooby doo and bruce lee. Sailfishing is a lot of boat ride and a little fishing.

Speaking of boat rides, the boat is doing pretty good. I’m going a step above my normal off season upgrades. My boat was made in Cairo Georgia. EVERY PART ON MY BOAT……….comes from NOT AMERICA. Understanding everything I use is imported, I am investing in replacing as much as I can and stocking up to help keep costs down in 2025. The big news is a new pair of 2025 300hp Suzuki outboards will be on the boat in a week. My hand was forced by the tariff threat that I believe is real. I run a high quality operation in many ways. When you book a trip with me, only weather or a severe illness will have me cancel your trip. I’m rough guessing the last time I had a mechanical issue cancel a trip might be 2012. I keep up maintenance on my boat the best I can. It is very expensive and takes a lot of time. I also have to rely on many unreliable people to get my service work. It is a big circus. Anyways, the costs for me are going up. 2024 was a bad year for my business. Probably the worst in my 14 years as a full time charter operator. I promise you most in the charter fleet are hurting too. I hope to separate myself as not cutting corners to make my situation work. There are too many guides operating here and everybody is looking for a deal before they look who they are getting on a boat with. Lot of crappy boats living life on the edge of existence. I plan to be around many more years until my body is too broken to do this full time. Come see how hard I work for you to make the best outcome possible. My goal is to have you as a repeat customer or refer a friend or neighbor to charter with me on their next visit to the Keys.

One final important message about Christmas week. Not a good one. I know you are traveling from all parts of the country and world. I understand your time, cost and intent. I also know some people are going to get sick. Flu sick, cold sick, covid sick or whatever is going around, That is unfortunate. I will be asking you during our check in phone call about the health of your group. That is your time to make the right decision. If somebody in your group is sick, they can not come on the boat. Yes, that sucks. What sucks worse is when you make me make that decision at the dock or on the boat. That will be ugly. Don’t make me do that. Nothing will go better once we are in that situation. Every christmas week, except last year, I get really sick. The cost of your trip getting me sick is staggering. I have too many people counting on me being healthy. I can go on and on. Do not get me sick. Do not bring sick guests on my boat. I will leave you at the dock and your deposit will not come back. Everybody will be pissed off. That will be 100% on you. Just don’t do it.

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