Keys Fishing Report: Early Winter Bounty in the Florida Keys

Good morning from the heart of the Florida Keys, this is Artificial Lure with your local angler’s report for Sunday, November 2nd, 2025. If you’re getting lines wet anywhere from Key Largo down through Key West today, you’re catching the Keys at their early winter best. Tide-wise, we’re working off an early morning low around 2:30 AM with a strong push up to high tide right about now—just after sunrise at 7:36 AM for Islamorada and high right around 7:00 AM further down in Key West, making for some prime moving water this morning. The sun came up at 6:32 AM and will tuck down at 5:39 PM, so you’ve got a beautiful full day to work your spots. The tidal coefficient is middling—plenty enough to stir up the flats and the channels, without making things too wild in the bays, according to Tide-Forecast and Tides4Fishing. Weather’s stable. The National Weather Service down in Key West calls for light southeast breezes, air temps hovering from the low 70s into the high 70s, and only a light chop on the bay. That’s perfect for anything from poling flats to chasing birds offshore. Now, on to the fishing. That first cold front last week put a charge into the backcountry—folks have been reporting strong catches of snook, redfish, and speckled trout out in the Everglades and upper Keys, according to Richard Hastings in Keys Weekly. Snook have been busting bait on the windward shorelines, and redfish are holding tight where the mullet muds stack up in the bays. Speckled trout are drumming up serious action in the softer potholes—try pitching shrimp under popping corks or a white paddle-tail jig when they’re holding deeper. For the fly crew, topwater flies worked along early morning shorelines have been drawing explosive strikes from both snook and juvenile tarpon. The bonefish bite continues to impress, especially on the cleaner, cooler flats following these fronts. Sightcasters have been rewarded with fish on shrimp and crab imitations—just be sure to land them soft. And here’s the kicker: the bonefish are running bigger on the ocean side flats this month, with some seasoned locals saying this is as good as they’ve seen in years. Offshore, things are a bit steadier with the winds, but dolphin (mahi) are still around in scattered numbers. And keep your eyes peeled—there are some late-season tunas popping up along color changes in deeper water. But do take note: the recreational hogfish harvest is closed as of November 1st this year, according to the FWC and AOL News, so let those go if you hook one. Bait and lures are classic Keys fare: live pilchards and pinfish are deadly all around, but artificial fanatics are seeing strong results with soft plastics imitating shrimp and baitfish, particularly the Z-Man and Gulp lines in “New Penny” and white. For finesse, in the clear water, the spybait technique can be a sleeper—Aaron Martens’ advice holds true, a slow and steady retrieve with Duo Realis Spinbait or similar lures will tempt wary fish cruising the This content was created in partnership and with the help of Artificial Intelligence AI.