Offshore Fishing in Key West

Sailfish are one of the most popular targets for anglers fishing offshore around Key West. This one is going through his repertoire of aerial tricks, others will just dive deep. Whatever they do you can be sure of a mighty scrap when fishing offshore with light tackle

Offshore fishing in Key West is productive and plentiful. Just a few miles offshore on the Atlantic side and you're in blue water with depths ranging from 80 feet to many thousands of feet. Main species for our light tackle boats are sailfish, tuna, mahi-mahi, kingfish and wahoo.

A fine Key West Tuna. You don't need to be told of the eating quality of these beauties but be assured that they also put up a great fight on light tackle

Almost all of our offshore fishing is done by fishing with live bait, so the normal start to an offshore trip will be a quick visit to one of the marker buoys to catch some threadfin herring on sabiki rigs or a couple of throws of the cast net to collect a few pilchards. In no time at all we'll be motoring out to the blue water to start our search for a few "residents of the deeps".

Watching an experienced skipper using a cast net to catch bait is poetry in motion. I'm sure it's the hardest thing in the world to do and yet these guys make it look like a piece of cake. Here Captain Manny uses the cast net to catch pilchards before venturing offshore in search of monsters.

The most likely fishing method will be drift fishing where the skipper turns off the engines and the boat drifts broadside down the wind. This is a great method of fishing when the seas are a bit "lumpy" because everything takes place so slowly, the boat rises and falls with the swell and there are no violent movements to worry the occasional sailor. Other fishing methods are fishing at anchor (it's only likely if we're fishing in water up to about 100 feet deep, after that we can't get anybody to volunteer to pull the anchor) or trolling lures or dead baits with the motors running which is sometimes necessary when there is no wind or the wind is in the wrong direction.

There is such a tremendous variety of species when offshore fishing in a Key West light tackle boat that you simply don't know what you're going to hook next but one thing is for sure, whatever you hook it will PULL HARD !!.