FLA KEYS Report......

[Duffman]

First time down and def won't be the last. Fishing day and nite was both lights out!

Considering we did not charter (rented a 22 Parker CC) and fished pretty much blind not knowing the area, we did pretty well. All kinds of exotics and pulled a few mahi off the weed patches. Need to upload pics....will post a few now

Live shrimp and cut ballyhoo were the hot baits. Tarpon were the only thing we could not get to bite for the life us!!!! Tried every lure we had and live bait on fluro. They'd swim up stare at the bait or lure and swim off...frustrating fish!

Anyone who hasn't been down, make it part of your plans! Thanks for all the info I got from guys here over the winter. Much appreciated!

Btw....can someone I'd this cat? Caught at the harbor dock at night

[henro]

Hardhead cat? Doesn't look like a sail, the fins are longer on sails.

[tjd24]

Gasparilla Catfish

[shrimpman steve]

Nice scrawled file fish

[hartattack]

Sounds like a great time Duff, can't wait to hear the details :)

[Gerry Zagorski]

Good for u Duff, awesome!!

[JDTuna]

Hardhead cat. Venomous and hurt a lot if they stick you.

Did you try crabs and live mullet by the bridges for tarpon?

[bulletbob]

https://images.search.yahoo.com/search/images;_ylt=AwrBT8ClD1dZ2OwAEIFXNyoA;_ylu=X3oDMTBy MjB0aG5zBGNvbG8DYmYxBHBvcwMxBHZ0aWQDBHNlYwNzYw--?p=hardhead+catfish&fr=sfp-yff13

[dfish28]

What few things I can say, those hardhead cats have an awesome skeletal structure in there heads, my Grandfather used to catch them while fishing for better fish but he knew if you buried them and let the flesh rot off you would get this amazing part from its skull bone if you look at it after it was all cleaned off it looked like Jesus on the Cross... sounds weird but I saw them myself, cool little thing to know if ya have the time

[Duffman]

Did you try crabs and live mullet by the bridges for tarpon?

We used live shrimp and pinfish around the bridges. Threw spoons on the spinning gear and tried countless different flies on the fly gear. All we got were follows.

We werent allowed to have the rental out before sunup or after sundown so the fishing in the dark was all done from land. Even then we got follows and no hookups. Only saw one guy connect to a tarpon all week and that quickly came unbuttoned.

Thanks for the id on the cat. Helluva lot of fun on the light spin gear!

[AndyS]

Pretty cool, guess it's ho-hum to them but to visitors it's cool exotics !