Key West Fishing Report & March Merkin Tournament Results

Nothing to complain about here in the Florida Keys this week. March weather has been cooperating nicely and the fishing has been exceptional. For those of you awaiting your turn for a cast at a tarpon, bonefish or permit, they are here and they'll be around for a while now.

This past week has been a quest of hookups and breakoffs for my angler. He's a good angler and has seen and hooked more fish this week. Redfish on the flats of the Lower Keys - you'd think "no way" but we've managed to hook a few on fly after they were so skiddish for days prior to that. To add to the list of fish, tarpon, bonefish, jacks, barracuda and permit. That's an active day and and active week for this guy. I'm happy to say that we finally landed him a couple of very large tarpon yesterday to round out the day.

We spent a large amount of our time avoiding the 23 boats entered in the first annual March Merkin tournament. The tournament was out of Hurricane Hole Marina and was hosted by Jon Ain and Dave Horn. The tournament was created because of the popular demand for a permit tournament in March, since the Del Brown was moved to July by popular angler vote. Historically the weather has been windy and therefore tough fly fishing for permit. Many of the anglers who normally fish the Del Brown were delighted to be able to fish this week.

Anglers competed for bragging rights and some great prizes in the March Merkin. At the end of three days of fishing, only a handful of boats actually managed to land a permit on fly. Largest Permit and First Place went to Jon Ain with guide Doug Kilpatrick. Ain caught 2 permit during the 3 day tournament, one weighing 28- pounds, the other 18- pounds. This tournament was unique in that permit were counted by inches. Each inch earned 4 points.

First place went to Jon Ain who was guided by Capt. Doug Kilpatrick. Second place went to Moe Slayton who was guided by Capt. Mike Guerin, and Third went to Tom Rowland who was fishing with Capt. Ernie Maynard.