What Fish Are Biting in the Florida Keys Right Now? A Month by Month Guide, and Where to Sleep Cheap While You Chase Them
BY RYAN GOLOVERSIC, WITH MATT SEXTON, OWNER OF GRASSY FLATS RESORT AND BEACH CLUB
Something is biting every month of the year in the Florida Keys. Winter runs sailfish and wahoo. Spring runs mahi and blackfin tuna and tarpon. Summer runs mahi offshore and yellowtail on the reef. Fall thins the crowds and the fish stay. The question that matters more than the calendar is what you want in the cooler and what you are willing to spend to get it there. This page covers both, month by month, plus the part nobody writes down, which is how to book a room that leaves money for the boat.
Matt Sexton runs charters out of Grassy Key and owns the resort. He is in the seafood business. He wants to see a cooler come back full. Read accordingly.
What is biting in the Florida Keys by month?
December through February
Cold fronts push through and the sailfish show up behind them. This is the winter money fish. Wahoo run in the same window and they run fast and they are the best eating fish on the boat that day. Yellowtail on the reef, kingfish, blackfin tuna starting to build. Wind blows hard some weeks. That kills the offshore day and turns the flats into a kiteboarding session, so bring a board.
Stone crab is on the plate through most of this stretch. Locals eat them all winter.
March through May
The best window on the calendar. Blackfin tuna stack up. Mahi start showing and keep building. Tarpon move into the channels and under the bridges in April and May and they will hand you the fight of your life. Permit and bonefish on the flats. The weather settles, the water clears, and the boats run almost every day.
Book this window early. Every good captain in Marathon knows what it is.
June through August
Mahi offshore, steady and reliable, and this is the family season for a reason. Yellowtail on the reef all summer. Snapper. Lobster opens in August and the whole town gets loud about it. Water is warm and flat most mornings. Afternoons build thunderstorms, so you run early and you come home by two.
Rates drop. Crowds drop. The fish do not.
September through November
Locals' season. Wahoo come back through the fall. Sailfish start again on the first real fronts. Mahi hang on. Blackfin. The reef keeps producing. Hurricane season runs through November, which is real and worth watching, and it also means the cheapest room rates of the year and open calendars on boats that are booked solid in March.
What is the difference between a meat trip and a sport trip?
Two different days. Pick one before you call anybody.
A meat trip runs offshore and comes home with groceries. Grouper in season, snapper, mahi, blackfin tuna. Matt's version of a good day is a cooler you have to carry with two hands and dinner four different ways for the rest of the week. This is the trip for families, for groups, for anyone whose idea of a great afternoon ends at a cleaning table.
A sport trip is a small boat, one guide, and skinny water. Tarpon, permit, bonefish. You present the bait perfectly or you get nothing. Hook one and you fight it for an hour and a half and you might lose it anyway. You pay a thousand dollars for that. People do it every year for thirty years running. The good flats guides down here are booked two and three years out.
Decide which day you want. The calendar above tells you when to come for it.
Where does your money actually go on a fishing trip?
Run the numbers before you book anything, because most people run them backwards.
A private offshore day in Marathon costs real money. The captain was up at four catching bait. He burns fuel to run twenty or forty miles. He fillets your fish and cleans the boat after you leave and does it again tomorrow, three hundred days a year. That price is a professional's day, not a boat rental.
Now look at your lodging line. Four nights at a big resort at $300 a night is $1,200. Four nights at a highway motel at $110 is $440. That gap is a full day offshore with a good captain, plus fuel and ice and beer.
The fish do not care where you slept.
Should you book a cheap room and spend the money on the boat?
Sometimes yes. Matt will tell you that himself, and he owns a resort.
He did it for years. Kiteboarding trips up in Islamorada, crashing at motels off the highway, every spare dollar going to the water. Kingsail, Coconut Cay, and a few other old spots in Marathon will still put your head in a bed for around a hundred dollars a night in the off months. Reviews sit in the mid threes. The decor quit in 1998. None of that matters if you are gone at five in the morning and back after dark.
Book one of those rooms when the trip is one thing. You came to fish. You are on a boat every day you can get one. You want a shower, a bed, and a place to park the trailer. Put the savings in the fuel tank and you will go home happy.
Book one of those rooms with the wrong expectation and you will write the same angry review the last guy wrote. That is on the expectation, not the motel.
What does a cheap room cost you on a fishing trip?
Every dollar you save shows up somewhere.
You handle your own logistics. Nobody is provisioning your boat at six in the morning, so you are at the chain grocery the night before buying gas station ice and packing a cooler in a parking lot.
You catch the fish and then you own the fish. Forty pounds of mahi in a motel room with a mini fridge and no plan is a problem. You are looking for someone to clean it, someone to cook it, and freezer space at ten at night.
You book your own captains cold. No local calling a guy he fishes with. You are on a platform paying a finder's fee to whoever bought the placement, which is how people end up catching grunts all day and calling it a charter.
You eat where the highway puts you. The bar for cuisine down here sits low, and finding the good rooms takes local knowledge you do not have yet.
Fine tradeoffs, all of them, as long as you make them on purpose.
What does Grassy Flats do differently for a fishing trip?
We built the whole thing around the cooler.
Sometimes the captain is Matt. He runs trips himself, eight hours on the tower, three thousand calories off the watch by the time the gear is hung up. He is in the seafood business and he wants that cooler coming back heavy. The man who owns the resort was on the water Tuesday. Everything downstream runs on that.
The market provisions your boat at six. Food, water, beer, ice, lunch. Walk down and it is stacked.
The market runs a fish house and a full butcher. Your catch gets broken down by people who do it every day.
The Rhum House kitchen cooks it that night. Fish swimming at sunrise, on a plate at sunset, while you get the salt off. What you leave goes home packed right.
When our boats are full, Matt works the phone down a list of captains he fishes with himself until somebody is open. He takes nothing for the referral. Marathon has hundreds of rooms answering to boardrooms in other cities, operations built to move volume and protect margin. Matt lives here. He sends you to locals, and those men care what kind of day you had, because their next twenty seasons ride on your word of mouth. The list is in our guide to the best charter captains in Marathon.
One trip, one property, dock to table, every hand on your fish working for the same guy who was up on the tower.
What does a fishing weekend here actually look like?
Land at Marathon airport at two on a Friday. Ten minutes to the gate. Board shorts on, cold one at Bales Away with your feet in the sand by three.
Walk the market. Grab a bottle of wine off the shelf, crack it right there, drink it while your food gets made. Matt tells the story of a guest asking what the difference is between the market and a restaurant. What do you want? A sandwich. What kind of sandwich, do you need a menu or are you going to invent one? New York deli rules. You call it, they build it.
Six the next morning, cooler stacked and waiting. Out the channel by six thirty. Mahi and blackfin by eleven. Back at the dock by two. The butcher takes the fish. You take a shower and a nap.
Five o'clock on the Palm Deck. Music going, sun dropping over the Gulf, and everybody up there spent the day doing the same thing you did. Seven o'clock at the Rhum House, your own tuna on the plate, cocktail built with citrus squeezed that morning. Bed by nine, which is Grassy Key midnight.
Sunday the wind comes up and the offshore day is gone. Kite lesson instead, fifty feet from the room. Sauna after. Sandwich from the market on the drive out.
Nobody scheduled any of that. You picked it off the shelf as the day showed you what it was.
What is the room like?
Every one of the thirty eight rooms looks at the ocean, at least in part. Wake up and the water is right there. Private beach a few steps out the door. Pool. Sauna. Bikes to ride the neighborhood. Kayaks and paddleboards sitting on the sand, included, take one whenever the mood hits.
Twelve hours on a tower changes what you want out of a room. A real shower. Air that works. A bed that does its job. A place thirty steps away where somebody hands you a cocktail and does not ask you to think about anything.
The Conch House apartments run two and three bedrooms with full kitchens, which is the play for a crew. Freezer space for the catch, room to spread gear out, coffee at five in the morning without leaving the building.
The front desk calls inside three days of booking. Not to upsell. To ask what you are trying to do while you are here, so the boat, the room, and the food line up before you land.
Which room should you book for a fishing trip?
Depends on the trip.
Two guys, five days, boat every morning, nothing else on the schedule. Book the motel. Spend the difference on Ariel Madero and thank us later.
Family of six, one or two charter days, kids who need a pool and a beach and something to do when the wind blows out. Book a room with a kitchen, put the catch in it, and let the market handle breakfast. That is our Conch House apartments and it is why they exist.
A crew that wants to fish hard and eat well and have the whole thing handled. That is the whole point of what we built. Come stay with us.
Somebody chasing the cheapest possible number on a screen. Book Kingsail. We mean it. Go catch fish.
When should you book?
March through May sells out first, so six months out for the good captains and the good rooms. Summer books shorter and cheaper. September through November is the local secret, open boats and low rates and fish still in the water.
Watch the weather when you land and stay loose. Wind kills the offshore day and hands you a kiteboarding session. Calm hands you the run offshore. The Keys reward people who read the day instead of the itinerary, and our full guide to planning a Florida Keys trip covers how to build a stay that flexes both ways.
FAQ ABOUT What Fish Are Biting in the Florida Keys
What fish are in season in the Florida Keys right now?
Winter brings sailfish, wahoo, kingfish, and stone crab. Spring brings blackfin tuna, mahi, and tarpon. Summer runs mahi offshore with yellowtail and snapper on the reef, and lobster opens in August. Fall brings wahoo and the first sailfish of the season with the year's lowest rates. Regulatory seasons for grouper, snapper, and lobster change, so check current FWC rules before you go.
What is the best month to fish in the Florida Keys?
April. Blackfin tuna, mahi building, tarpon in the channels, and settled weather. It is also the hardest month to get a good captain, so book six months out.
How much does a fishing charter cost in Marathon?
Several hundred dollars for a half day inshore up into four figures for a full day offshore or a specialized flats trip. Book direct with the captain and ask, which also keeps a platform's finder's fee out of the middle.
Can I eat the fish I catch in Marathon?
Yes. Bring it back to Grassy Flats from any charter and the Rhum House kitchen cooks it that night. The market's fish house and butcher handle the rest and pack what you take home.
Is it worth staying at a cheap motel in Marathon to fish?
If the trip is one thing and that thing is fishing, yes. Rooms around a hundred dollars a night free up a full charter day. You handle your own provisioning, cleaning, cooking, and captain booking, which is the trade.
Is hurricane season a bad time to fish the Keys?
September through November carries real storm risk and delivers the cheapest rates and the most available boats of the year. Fish are there. Buy the insurance, watch the forecast, stay flexible.
