Fishing Key West with
Captain Mike Bartlett
May 2024
Last months article, KEY WEST TARPON SEASON: PART 1, I talked about the early stages of our tarpon season. A lot of the fish will show up in the backcountry as the weather permits and we will start to see some fish moving along the Atlantic side of the Lower Florida Keys. That is precisely what is occurring as I am typing out this article in mid April. Unfortunately we have had a couple of cold fronts the past week or so and a lot of wind. This crappy weather has put a damper on fishing in general and has kept the tarpon away for the most part.
There has been some tarpon around, just enough to keep it interesting but it’s been tough going for the most part. Weather is always the main issue in the early stages of tarpon season. When we happen to get a good spell of weather and there is a lot tarpon around and we are all happy and having fun but one late season cold front will set us right back to the beginning.
Fortunately I’ve been doing this a long time now and I have come to expect the weather to screw us over just when the good stuff gets going. Nothing we can do about it other than adapt and wait for the conditions to return to normal.
Hopefully we are done with cold fronts (I do expect one or two more just to add insult to injury) and we can get on with it for the rest of tarpon season.
The second part of tarpon season will start to show signs in late April and early May when we start to see the big schools of tarpon moving along the Atlantic side. This when the real party gets going and we are in full on tarpon mode.
The transitional period between part 1 and part 2 can be a little annoying. Somedays the fish will be on the ocean side, some days on the Gulf side, some days somewhere in the middle and then there’s the days they are everywhere and nowhere. The good days are unbelievable and the hard days are just a grind, but overall it will be good just might have to work a little harder for it.
Now that we are in second part of tarpon, there’s a lot going on. Basically, on any given day tarpon will be moving along the Atlantic side of Lower Keys. There are plenty of areas where we can post up and wait for tarpon to swim by. It works really well and Keys tarpon guides have been fishing tarpon like this for decades. No need to fix it, it works.
But I tend to get bored going to same place everyday, so I mix it up for my own sanity. Also, If I’m fishing with someone for several days, I try to take them to different areas to see what else is out there. Most of these places I’m not gonna see a thousand tarpon in a day, but I really like the ones I find. And I always have the oceanside to fall back on.
To make it really interesting, we have several events that occur in May and June. Most notably is the polalo worm hatch. The worm hatch has been written about extensively so I’ll keep it brief. The worm hatch is an event that happens late evening around the full and new moons in late May and early June and tarpon love ‘em. Once those little bits of the worm are swimming around the ocean, tarpon get really dumb. Tarpon will be everywhere slurping tiny worms from the water’s surface. Pretty cool.
My favorite event that happens a little more regularly is the guppy hatch. This is another period when tarpon can just be stupid easy. The guppy hatch however requires a specific set of conditions which one part, the tide, is predictable and the other part, the weather, is not. I could tell you what days a guppy hatch will probably happen but only if the weather is right. Like the worm hatch the guppy hatch is a period of time when tarpon are feeding heavily but on a variety of baitfish weakened by a lack of oxygen content in the water. Easy pickin’s for the tarpon and the tarpon angler. The guppy hatches occur early in the morning and last maybe an hour or two.
The main part of the spring tarpon migration is upon us. Schools of full grown tarpon will be moving along the Atlantic side of the Lower Florida Keys most days and that is where you will most likely find me. For the next few months I’ll be dreaming of flat c
Capt. Mike Bartlett
www.facebook.com/CaptMikeBartlett