Just About Everything

by Capt. John Sahagian

I am often asked, “What is biting in November?”. The easy answer is, “Just about everything”. It seems over simplified and in reality, it is. I cannot think of a single Keys species that is unavailable in November. Now for the rub, just how likely you are to catch your species of choice often has a lot to do with the conditions leading up to your day on the water. You should realize that there is a great deal of overlap as to when you are most likely to find a certain species of fish. A classic example would be sailfish. Sails are caught in Keys waters 365 days a year. Would I set out to target sailfish in August? No, however someone up or down the Keys may well catch one that day. Sailfish are most likely to bite near the reef line during a cold front as the North Wind is blowing bait offshore.

The bottom line is that every fish bites best under certain conditions and you can get such a wide variety of conditions in November that it is difficult to call in advance what will be happening. Some years the conditions are very summer like and the dolphin bite is going strong offshore and the tarpon are still feeding well inshore. Other years the Witch of November really does come on time and the conditions are identical to what you would find in February. When this happens the shallow patch reef fishing will be on fire, the sailfish will be busting just over the reef line and the trout fishing in the Gulf side will be hot.

There are precious few months that you can target and keep grouper while they are actually feeding well on the shallow patch reefs of the Keys. As I have mentioned, the north wind is the factor that turns on the most aggressive feeding habits of the shallow patch dwellers. If you are lucky enough to get cooler winds from the north to the northeast I would then recommend that you spend time on the patches. The mangrove and mutton snapper bites should be hot. The grouper will also be available and November and December are the best months to target them when you may actually land a few for dinner. A reminder that closed season on shallow water grouper in both State and Federal Atlantic waters starts in January and runs through April. The governing powers that be have decided to steal from Keys anglers only to gift these same fish to anglers in counties north of us later in the year.

If on the other hand, we are blessed with more summer like weather this fall, then continuing with the summer fishing will be the plan for the day. So far this year the dolphin bite has been going strong right into the beginning of fall and I would expect this to hold true as long as the warm weather continues. This will also hold true for our inshore fisheries. The permit, bonefish and tarpon will stay available as well as the other skinny water inhabitants that are temperature sensitive.

Of course what is most likely is that we will get a mix of conditions ranging from the very chilly to the sweltering. This makes it difficult to plan in advance the best course of action until immediately before the time to push off from the dock. As an old scout master of mine used to say “We need to be rigidly flexible in our plans”. I keep this in mind and “load for bear” as the saying goes, so that I can be prepared for whatever opportunities I might find. The reality is that the conditions will be something in between and our plans will not be as important to the fish as they are to us.

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