Planning on hitting the local beaches this weekend.I got a message from my friends that run the Marathon Lady earlier in the week about the nighttime mangrove bite in the Keys . This bite usually fires up right after the full moon in July but Capt Jonathan told me it was already on . It’s been pretty frustrating trying to find a weed free beach up our way so I called my friend Marty Barlow and we took the ride down early Wednesday morning. The Marathon Lady runs two trips during the summer , 830 to 1230 during the day , and 630 to midnight in the evening . The morning trip produced some pretty good fishing for yellowtail snappers from 12 to 15 inches and Marty and I each limited out . This is light tackle fishing as our setups were 3500 Penn Spinfisher reels on 7 foot Penn Batallion rods . Those yellowtail definitely put a bend in the rod when they pick up the chunks of ballyhoo or squid strips . The evening trip started out slow but the action usually starts around 9 o’clock or so when the darkness sets in and the mangroves just seem to fire up . That’s exactly what happened and the action got chaotic . We had our limit of mangroves in an hour and these snapper ran from 14 to 20 inches on the average . This bite will actually get better after the full moon and last year they had great fishing right into August . The Marathon Lady is a first class operation and if anyone wants any information about making a trip down to experience this great fishery feel free to contact me . I hope to find some surf action this weekend and hopefully I can post a positive report in the next couple of days .
To the angler who loves to fish the beaches, shores, jetties, bridges and piers of Florida.
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