Winter fishing in Miami, 2026

Back from another trip to Miami, visiting my daughter and family. This time, I took along my youngest daughter and son as well, as it was his first time visiting Florida. We had many family events and trips planned all week, which provided for less fishing time than usual for me. No big deal, I've fished Miami and Florida plenty enough in the past, and no plans of stopping either. For the purposes of this blog, I'll stick to our fishing related adventures...

Before the trip, I had set 3 separate fishing goals:

1) Fish Key Biscayne for a day with a guide. I chose Captain Carl Ball who runs Awol fishing guide service. I've fished with him multiple times in the past, and have always been happy with his effort and quality of service. Being that Zev has never caught a shark, we figured we'd make it "easy" and focus our efforts on catching blacktip sharks.

2) Fish one of the piers with my grandchildren. Choice of Sunny Isles beach, Dania beach, or Pompano beach. I've fished all three piers in the past, with varying degrees of success. We'd make it a short outing, and combine with some beach time. Fishing with them has been on my bucket list ever since becoming a grandfather in 2020.

3) Spend the latter part of my trip fishing the Royal Glades / Snake Creek canal in North Miami beach, a short distance on foot from where we were staying. I've had better results on every trip since starting to fish there a few years ago, and it's mix of peacock bass, largemouth bass, jack crevalles, and possible snook, make for some tough but very rewarding fishing.

Goal 1:

We set out to meet up with Captain Carl at Crandon Park Marina, South of downtown Miami. We were on the water shortly after 6:30 AM. First order of the day was to check Carl's first spot for tarpons before sunrise.

Unfortunately, we couldn't find any tarpons, which we normally target by sight fishing. We headed off to make a run for the first shark spot of the day. Plan was to catch some ladyfish to use for cutbait. Ladyfish are very easy to catch, and make for good fun on light tackle, much like mini tarpons. 

Sure enough, Carl hooked one on his first cast, and immediately had a shark come after it. Zev and I followed up, and hooked one each on our first casts. While I reeled mine in at high speed, Zev tarried long enough to get hit by a blacktip shark. Shot some footage of Zev getting sharked by "the taxman".

    

Next two casts with cutbait, landed back to back blacktip sharks. Quite small, but enough to get him some much needed practice.

3 sharks within the first 20-30 minutes was great. I thought we had it made, to where Zev would have sore arms well before the end of the outing. Unfortunately, the sharks and ladyfish both disappeared from the spot, and nothing else bit for a while.

We moved to another spot, and despite seeing some sharks, none were interested in our bait. Eventually, I started sight casting for barracuda, using a walk the dog style topwater lure. Using long distance casting and high speed retrieves, Carl and I kept drawing in schools of high speed chasing fish, but just about none were committing to biting. I eventually hooked a nice barracuda that gave me a couple blistering runs before spitting the hook. 

We moved to another spot, where the cut ladyfish managed to draw in two decent size nurse sharks, as well as a bigger blacktip shark. They all came within inches of out bait in the shallow water, but none took the bait. I managed to hook a small barracuda while casting, but it quickly jumped twice and spit the hook before I even had a chance to reel down and set the hook.

Eventually, we hit another spot that was crawling with ladyfish. Zev and I hooked and landed a good 7 or 8 of them, and lost a few more.

Eventually, we called it a day without hooking any more sharks, but not by lack of trying hard. As I often say, "it's part of the game"...

Goal 2:

I've been waiting for a while to finally get my grandchildren fishing. At ages 3 and 5, they are both ready to get started on good numbers of small fish. While I can guarantee that sort of action back home around Montreal, it's quite another feat to achieve in Miami, being that most of the spots I fish there are rather tough. With a short fishing window of about 1 hour or less, I figured my best bet would be to take them pier fishing for bait using a Sabiki rig. Being that I had two rods, my plan was to hook one up for bait for a potential bigger catch, while hooking good numbers of a mix a pilchards, croakers, or other smaller fish near the pier's pilings.

For those of you unfamiliar with the Sabiki rig, it's widely used in pier fishing, at least in South Florida. A nice stretch of 4-5 feet of mono or fluorcarbon line, with 5-6 razor sharp small dropper hooks, tipped with a tiny piece of plastic that imitates fish skin. Clip a sinker to the bottom of rig, drop down, and slowly jig. When the bite is on, the bait fish swarm the rig, and it's common to pull up 2-4 fish with every drop of the Sabiki rig.

We decided to hit Sunny Isles beach before sunrise. After spending a good 90 minutes or so of beach time, we got on the pier. Within a few drops, I landed a small bait fish, possibly a pilchard. I hooked it up to a bigger hook. and got some pics with my grandchildren before casting it out as bait on my second rod.

I then proceeded to show both of them how to drop and retrieve line using my spinning reel. Frustratingly enough, the pier was surrounded by thousands of schooling bait fish, but none were remotely interested in my rig, nor any of the other offerings anyone else the was using to try to catch them. A throw net would have been the best best, but not what I was there for. We ran out of time, and headed off to next event of the day with my grandkids. At least I finally got my first outing with them done, next time we'll have to plan on more pier time with them.

Goal 3:

Last but not least, was fishing the freshwater canal near my daughter's home in North Miami beach. For those of you that follow my blog since a while, you probably have read my succession of figuring out how to successfully fish this tough waterbody. After many long days of trial and error using various fishing lures and tactics, my best bet is to put in many hours casting jerkbaits. As such, I brought along some extra Rapala Husky Jerks for Zev to fishing along with me, hoping to put him onto some more fish.

One of the major factors in finding success fishing the Royal Glades / Snake creek canal, is putting in time. When I'm alone, I'll often fish a good 8+ hours on foot, casting relentlessly, while covering a good 10-15 km per day. With 2 kids on the trip, and other responsibilities during my trip, I only managed to get about 8 hours over the first 3 days of fishing there, and only 1 small largemouth bass came to play.

I was sort of perplexed by the poor quality of fishing we experienced in the canal. Weather was seemingly perfect, ranging from 26C to 30C on the days with fished, along with sunny skies and moderate winds. What I did notice, was slightly lower water level than usual, as well as tons of dead iguanas and many peacock bass, due to a major cold front that hit the region a couple weeks before my trip. While I don't like seeing dead fish or wildlife, and of the dead peacock bass was by far the biggest I've ever seen in person, somewhere in the 22-24 inch range. At least I know there should be others in that size range or possibly even bigger in the canal, for me to try to catch in future outings.

For the last couple days of my trip, a cold front blew in, dropping night time temperature to 7-8C, with daytime highs around 15C. My guess was that fishing would probably shut down ever worse for peacock bass and jacks, but I had a small glimmer of hope that largemouth bass may get active, as they are more resistant to colder conditions.

By now, Zev had given up on the fruitless canal fishing, so I got out solo early morning with my kids sleeping in. 35 km/h wind gust had the wind chill down to around 5C, and I fished in a hoodie for probably my first time ever in Miami.

Casting into the gusting wind, I started getting follows from largemouth bass, and managed to land 2 of them in the first hour of fishing.

Eventually, working my way back to where I started, I was surprised to hook and land a feisty and colorful peacock bass, my first of the trip, decent size too at 15 inches.

Sure enough, my son in law was working a plumbing job working nearby and saw me land it. Small world.

Headed home for lunch around noon, and hoped to convince Zev to come back with me. He declined my offer. Too bad, as the bite continued, and I landed another peacock bass, and 2 more largemouth.

Headed home early again, but 6 fish landed in 5 hours was far better than what I was able to catch so far on my trip.

Next morning was our last day in Miami. I woke up early, and again, Zev chose to sleep in, with outer temperature just as cold as the previous day. I was hoping to put in around 3 hours for fishing, before getting home to get all my chores done before flying home.

Took me about half hour of fishing to hook and land another peacock bass. 

This peacock bass had completely inhaled my lure, and had one treble hook in the gullet, with a second treble hook in it's gills. Those of you that have fished with me know how finicky I get about using sticky sharp hooks, and by the time I was able dislodge these, there was no chance this peacock bass was going to survive being released. Being that I was close enough to home in cold weather and having some frigid drinks and my backpack, I decided to harvest the peacock bass, being that I had never eaten one before.

Working my way down the bank, I landed my first jack crevalle of the trip about 20 minutes later. 

Now, being that I was already going to be cleaning fish for lunch, I harvested the jack as well, being that I had never eaten one up until this point as well.

Feeling real happy about myself, things got even better within minutes. My lure chased by a couple tiny jacks, and both got hooked at the same time. While this happened to me with bass once before, I've come close to replicating it with bigger jacks and even peacock bass in this canal, but this was the first time I've landed 2 jacks at once, even if they were quite small.

To top things off, I found a frigid iguana, quite sure it was still alive and waiting to heat up in the sun before being able to move again. I got a quick pic and put it back when I found it,

Despite the fishing getting better, I was forced to make the difficult decision of leaving for home, with a very busy afternoon planned.

First in order was to prepare my fresh caught lunch. Fish were bled and spines snapped as soon as I kept them.

Next, I filleted and deboned both fish, making sure to trim off all the darker flesh and entire bloodline from the jack, in order to provide a cleaner / less fishy taste. I set them in the fridge to rest to a couple hours. 

I seasoned some flour with a variety of spices, coated the fish in beaten egg, and dipped into flour mix. Didn't have any butter on hand, so I used a mix of canola and olive oil to pan fry them. Drizzled with some fresh squeezed lemon juice.

Plated the fish for Zev and I, along with arm pita bread and a well chilled, oversized beer. Found the peacock bass to be very tender and mild, while the jack was firmer and more flavorful. Perfect way to end out trip to Miami.

All in all, another fun and memorable trip, which won't soon forget. We got to spend a lot of quality time with my grandkids, daughter, son in law and his family. Some other fun outings included a trip to Basspro shops / Outdoor world,  an airboat ride in the Everglades National park, trying my hand at golfing with the kids for the first time (at Top Golf), hitting the beach and some restaurants, and joining a group of about 40 family members for Monster Jam (monster truck competition) at Loan Depot Park, home of the Miami Marlins.

Would like to thank my daughter and especially in laws (Meir and Aliza) for hosting us yet again, their hospitality is legendary. Hoping to return sooner rather than later, for good occasions.