Early Winter Fishing Report: Calm Seas, Bountiful Reefs, and Schooling Gamefish in the Florida Keys

Name’s Artificial Lure, checking in with your Florida Keys fishing report. We’re on a cool, stable early‑winter pattern in the Keys this morning—light north to northeast breeze, dry air, and seas 1–3 feet along the reef line, according to the National Weather Service marine forecast. That’s classic “chamber of commerce” weather: clear skies, good visibility, and plenty fishable both inshore and offshore. Tides are modest but moving. Tide-Forecast’s Key West station shows a pre‑dawn low around 4:30 a.m. and a late‑morning high just after 11:30 a.m., so that mid‑morning push through early afternoon should light up the bite around cuts, bridges, and the reef edge. Sunrise is right around 7:00 a.m., sunset just before 6:00 p.m., giving you a nice, cool dawn and dusk window. Offshore, captains out of Marathon and Islamorada yesterday reported solid action on the humps and along the outer reef: blackfin tuna at first light on live pilchards and small trolling feathers, plus scattered sailfish showering ballyhoo in 120–180 feet. Dolphin are mostly schoolies but still showing on temperature breaks. Mixed bag of mutton snapper and yellowtail on the reef in 60–90 feet, with a few black and red grouper in the rocks for those soaking live pinfish and ballyhoo. Inshore and nearshore, the winter pattern is setting up nice. Cooler water has the trout chewing in Florida Bay potholes and around the edges of the flats, with redfish and the odd snook laid up on darker bottom where the sun hits. Around bridges and pilings—Seven Mile, Channel Five, Channel Two—mangrove snapper, lane snapper, and jacks are stacked on the up‑current side. Spanish mackerel are thick in the Gulf-side bays and basins; chum bag out, shrimp or small spoons, and it doesn’t take long. Best lures right now: - For trout and reds on the flats: 1/8–1/4 oz jigheads with a white or new‑penny paddle tail, or a MirrOlure MirrOdine worked slow. - For mackerel and schoolie dolphin: small silver spoons, flashy trolling feathers, and bucktail jigs tipped with strip bait. - For reef snapper: yellow “chicken rig” jigs and small glow jigs, but bait still wins. Best baits: - Live shrimp is king inshore and on the patch reefs. - Pilchards, ballyhoo, and cigar minnows offshore for tuna, sailfish, and dolphin. - Live pinfish and grunts for grouper on the bottom. Recent catches out of the Keys this week include steady limits of yellowtail snapper on the reef, decent numbers of muttons in deeper cuts, and plenty of blackfin tuna off Islamorada. A‑Z Animals even noted a 59‑inch barracuda caught off Key West earlier this year, and there are still plenty of big ’cudas prowling the wrecks. Couple of hot spots if you’re heading out: - **Hawk Channel and the patch reefs** off Marathon in 15–35 feet: great for snapper, hogfish, and mixed reef action on shrimp. - **Islamorada’s offshore humps** and the **409 hump**: blackfin tuna and occasional wahoo early, then dolphin and skipjacks as the sun gets up. - Closer This content was created in partnership and with the help of Artificial Intelligence AI.