June Preparations and Report

Wow!  We blasted through the month of May!  I forgot to publish my May report and here we are in June.  Lots of changes and lots to talk about.  I sure do try my best to help my guests to have the best experience by providing the best information possible and refining my approach to helping you be prepared for your trip.  Only way it doesn’t work well is by booking a trip and just showing up.  In May, there were many trips where my guests were not really aware of the reality of being on a boat.  June will be much less forgiving.  Here is how and why.

June in the Florida Keys…..it’s hot now!  The sun is really strong.  I promise you that it will be more than you think.  Prepare for that.  There is an easy way.  I have a whole page of “Trip Tips” to guide your preparations for each activity I offer.  By just you reading it, you are obligated to prepare the rest of the people that will be joining us.  Each person that is not prepared is a distraction to my mission and I usually have to adjust on these issues.  The most efficient way to invalidate all my preparation and planning for your trip is having the majority of your group unprepared.  Coming out on a trip with me is like a picnic and a camping trip.  But June throws in an added bonus.  Our record drought just abruptly ended and rainy season is officially here.  Our ocean water is nuclear hot and the balance will likely be in the form of a strong rainy season.  You should always plan for rain going through June and July.  Rain showers and storms will pop up somewhere pretty regularly.  I do provide basic rain gear on trips.  I recommend you bring yours if you have it.  I strongly recommend you always bring towels for every trip through Summer.  Plan on getting wet and you will be fine.  We will fish in reasonable showers.  I do my best to avoid storms.  I probably get caught in storms 2-4 times a year.   It’s never been a problem, but if you are unprepared for it, the scenario plays out less gracefully.  Ok, so we have heat and rain to prepare for.  How do we mitigate that?  Early starts.  My booking calendar is crap and I can’t change the listed start times.  7:15 is my desired start time for my Summer time trips.  It’s common to settle into an afternoon storm pattern, so getting out early helps beat what may come in the afternoon.  June also ends my afternoon 1-5pm trips.  Do not book an afternoon 1-5pm half day fishing trip.  It will be hot.  Fishing will mostly suck until the sun goes down to a lower angle.  You will likely have 1/5 the positive result you could expect from a morning half day trip.  Not my rules.  The fish make the rules.  I can make exceptions and plans for afternoon fishing success, but speak directly with me first before booking to iron out details and expectations.  It will not be a normal plan and times may need to be adjusted.

Morning reef trips have been the most popular trip lately.  Early starts have been producing great catches of large yellowtail snapper.  An incredibly smart, strong and delicious fish that is a challenge for any angler to catch.  I have an exact recipe for catching these fish.  A,B,C 1,2,3.  That is the recipe.  I teach you this.  It is not difficult.  Difficult is doing it wrong and expecting a good result.  That is the angling part that is performed by you.  The more you know going into this and the quicker you learn….the better the result.  Our fish are very smart.  They learn quickly and generally already know what we are doing.  The more we show them our trick, the less we catch on a rapidly declining scale.  The fish win when they learn more quickly than you do.  Realistically, I only get 1 solid shot at making it work on our first spot.  Once the sun is up at 10am level, my options are greatly reduced on the reef.  Maybe you are thinking “How am I supposed to know this about that?”  Google it or ask your phone “how to catch yellowtail snapper in the florida keys?”  You will instantly have 100 related videos that will be closely associated with what you will be doing with me.  Easy!  If and when you invest in your trip, it will pay off much more than if you are expecting to learn everything and not make mistakes that set our success back.  One other plan to consider is a 4-5 hour fish/snorkel trip.  Again, once that sun gets up to about 10 o’clock and we have a pile of fish, snorkeling is a great way to finish the trip and beat the heat.  Just put your trip specific info in your booking notes on your reservation.  Do not leave it blank!

Offshore fishing has been excellent.  We are outside of windy season and going offshore is more predictable.  Early starts very important if you want to catch tuna.  We also need winds under 15mph.  Typically we are covering 60 miles starting with tuna and finishing with dolphin(“mahi”) and electric deep dropping or wreck fishing depending on conditions.  Again, your preparation makes or breaks a good trip.  Offshore is a more physical, technical and at times chaotic trip.  Feedback from May trips revealed many guests that were not the one that made the reservation were not expecting the moving parts of an offshore trip.  Make no mistake….you and each person on my boat are my crew.  Again, you will be doing the A,B,C and 1,2,3.  I will be driving the boat and filling in when and where I can.  We are a team and success is a team effort.  Offshore, we are hunting and executing “plays” to capitalize on specific short term opportunities.  We have to work and earn and take advantage of what the ocean gives us.  If we are slow and miss set ups and botch high success scenarios and make fundamental mistakes…that adds up 4 times faster offshore vs. the reef.  Everything is moving and evolving quickly and our chances to put fish in the boat are limited.  You should know the basics of how to safely operate a rod/reel and be able to operate independently in a fast moving environment.  The more you know going into it, the better.  Learning through mistakes on offshore trips does not make for the best outcome.  If it is important to you, look up a few videos for your entire crew.  It will make a difference.

Snorkeling has been good from great.  Our reef water has been in the mid 80’s and rising.  We got a small shot of rain a week ago and that turned our water green from algae.  It has been raining for 24 hours now and I expect that impulse of fresh water to produce another algae bloom.  It happens every year, but this may be more pronounced than normal.  Going forward visibility will come and go.  Our May days of long stretches of perfect blue water are finished.  That was great for snorkeling.  Not so much for fishing.  Just watch the trends of wind and rain to have an idea as to what you may get on your trip.  Stability is good, wind and rain is not good.  Pretty basic.

I’m going to finish with some thoughts straight from my brain.  We have some good fishing patterns happening right now and a few about to emerge.  There is a lot to look forward to.  June is full of potential to have many great trips.  You will never see the prep time and planning that goes into each trip or my day to day to operate efficiently.  The easiest path forward is to plan and prepare for your trip.  Put some thought and effort into it.  It is hard to push through a trip doing it all wrong before we get it right.  It erases much of my effort.  I’m teaching and you are on a learning trip.  Every trip is that trip.  I have a recipe for everything I do and it works 99% of the time.  I can’t teach what needs to be done any faster or better on any given trip.  There is a learning curve for everything.  The more that learning curve shortens, the more success you will have.  Everything I do is searchable online.  My success comes from refining what we are doing macro to adjust for whatever challenge we have trip to trip on micro adjustments.  Details matter.  I really want you to have a great trip and be my best advertisement for my business.  My business could use a lot of help from my customers.  It has always been this way and I have complained about it a million times.  How about a short review?  It takes a few minutes.  You could do it while I’m cleaning your fish.  I’m always at that table for 30 minutes or longer.  How about sending me a picture or tagging my business to spread my reach?  Advertising is expensive.  I’m trying not to raise my rates.  I commonly have 4 or 5 people on board and something great is happening that involves 2 or 3 people.  Nobody is taking pictures.  I have no answer for this one.  On the water pictures are great.  I rarely ever get them.  Often I’m posing a picture to be taken on a phone that is not mine.  I don’t have time or the opportunity to get my phone out to take a picture, so I ask for yours.  Maybe 5% of the time I get those pictures that are…..ok enough to use.  On a recent family offshore trip there was a lot of action and I gave my phone to a guest to take pictures.  No kidding, 20 pictures of fish in the cooler.  Yes, not pictures of people catching fish or holding fish or anything you would expect to see.  Just pictures of fish on ice in a box.  Hmmm….I said.  I also get pictures where the person holding the fish is present in the picture.  So is 2000 feet of sky and they look like they are 20 feet away.   Uuummmmmm, fill the frame with the person holding the fish.  That’s what we want to see.  I have to crop pictures to make it something and by the time I get a framed picture that looks like a screen shot of the first video game ever made.  No good.