Wreck Fishing In Key West

Roaring out to a distant Gulf wreck on a
 morning when the ocean was as flat as glass

Wreck fishing in Key West is a blast !!. The sea bed on both the Atlantic side and in the Gulf of Mexico is littered with wrecks, and most of them are home to vast numbers of fish.

These Goliath Grouper are seriously big fish. This is as high as two grown men could lift this one for a picture. He swam away happily once returned to the ocean. This one was caught from a Gulf Wreck only about 60 feet deep. We saw him swimming around, lowered a bait and of course he ate it...Greedy Grouper !!

The wrecks on the Atlantic side of Key West tend to be in deeper water than those in the Gulf, and tend to be home to huge numbers of amberjack, blackfin tuna, black grouper and mutton snapper. These fish are happy to eat just about anything that you drop down there, including live and dead bait plus a host of artificial lures. Hooking 'em is easy, it's getting them to the surface that causes the problems !.

Even Goliath Grouper have to start off small !. Keith Arthur, presenter of the TV program Tight Lines in the UK is a regular visitor to Key West

If anything, the variety of fish on the Gulf wrecks is even greater than those on the Atlantic side. The wrecks tend to be in much shallower water (between 20 and 70 feet) but that doesn't seem to make the fish fight less. Apart from the usual snapper and grouper varieties the gulf wrecks hold big numbers of barracuda, permit and sharks, plus every wreck seems to have at least one goliath grouper in residence. Find the right wreck in the Gulf and you're guaranteed a bite on every single drop down to the bottom. Action is fast and furious and the skippers earn their money continually replacing bitten through leaders, lost hooks etc together with unhooking vast numbers of fish. The only time that they get to eat their lunch on a wrecking trip is when the boat is motoring between wrecks.