Florida Keys Last Fishing Trip

Here are the pictures from the last fishing trip of our vacation. I knew this day would come, I just am not quite ready yet to get back to the freezing cold reality called home.

Anyhow on Wednesday we headed out to the Atlantic well before the sun came up. We headed west 12 miles towards Sombrero Key and fished some spots along the reef looking for groupers. We tried deep water holes on the outer edges fishing over 120 feet deep, we tried shallow water reefs in 20 foot of water, and we focused mainly on hard bottoms in the 40-60 foot range. We caught lots of groupers in the 16-22 inch range, but only one that was big enough to keep:

We caught alot of yellowtail snapper, some lane snapper, a porgy looking fish and then these two crazy looking fish:

Also we had some big barracuda hanging around our boat and everytime we reeled in a fish they would bite them in half, pretty cool to watch! We spent some time just feeding the barracudas.

Then about noon Justin and Chad went scuba diving while we were fishing. They caught 6 lobsters and saw thousands of fish. Here is Justin with 2 of the lobsters. We ate them for dinner along with the grouper and snappers!


After diving we fished a couple more spots before a big front moved in and turned the calm seas into a very bumpy ride back to the dock. We hoped to get alot more scuba diving and lobster hunting in this vacation, but the weather was just a bit too windy and the water a bit too stirred up most of the time. Next time we head back to the keys we will hopefully be able to dive and spear fish much more frequently! Now that we have one trip under our belts we will be able to go full bore right from the gate!!

Thursday we took the kids to a few souvenir stores in the morning and then hit the swimming pool in the afternoon and then went over to Coco Plum's hot tub in the evening after our home cooked seafood feast.

Friday we will pack up everything, take the boat back to the storage marina, take all of Bob's stuff back to his storage unit, do some swimming in the heated pool and then go out to eat for an early dinner before renting a movie to watch with the kids in the evening.

Saturday we fly out of Miami airport at 9 am into St. Louis at 11 am and then home to snow in Peoria at 3 pm-ish.

Special thanks to one of my clients and good friends Bob Fortner who let me use his boat and much of his fishing and snorkeling equipment for our vacation. His generosity helped make this one of the very best family vacations of all times! He also got me acquainted to some of the best fishermen in the keys who really steered us in the right direction on where, when, why, and how to fish down here. Larry and John- Thank you so much!

I don't exactly know when, but I do know I will be back fishing and vacationing in the Keys! In the mean time if anyone is heading down that way and has any questions about fishing or eating or adventuring to the fullest just shoot me an email and I will be glad to help.