Lots of anglers in this part of the state begin the day cast-netting pilchards and other baits.

When spring tips toward summer in the Florida Keys, it’s prime time for fishing wrecks in the Gulf of Mexico. Cobia, migrating north, stop at wrecks and towers to rest and feed. Kingfish gather in the same places, waiting for warm water to drive them upcoast. Schools of spawning permit swarm the structures.

Time it right and you’ll get to all these fish—and more—before they’re gone.

That was our plan on an April morning a year ago. Captain Paul D’Antoni, who runs a 23-foot center console out of Key West, reasoned that we needed an early start. Our first stop would be a wreck 20 miles out. Conditions looked good, though a hot blast had water temperatures unusually high, already 76 degrees, high enough in a matter of time to drive the last cobia north. On the plus side, we had the first calm day after a stretch of hard south wind. “Whether the winds push the fish to the wrecks and towers, or whether the fish hover by them longer to feed in high wind, being the first anglers there after windy stretches often brings good results,” D’Antoni said.

At one of his favorite bait spots, D’Antoni cast-netted pinfish to satisfy the cobia, and he caught a few blue runners and pilchards on sabiki rigs for kings. We already had live crabs for permit. Then we began the run north across the Gulf’s pale slate waters, the color of the cloudless sky over us.

North of the Keys, the Gulf floor is mostly hard and flat, without much cover, and it slowly slopes away from the islands. It’s like a desert for migrating fish, and any structure attracts them as an oasis does a traveler. It’s not that hospitable to anglers either, unless they know the terrain. One popular spot is the Sturtevant Wreck, in 65 feet of water, at 17 miles (No. 16 on Florida Sportsman Fishing Chart for Key West). The string of Department of Defense towers that runs from Southwest Florida out to the Dry Tortugas and hold cobia and snapper and grouper, among other species, are also marked on charts. Of them, the closest to Key West is the V Tower, in shallower water just east of the New Grounds, 32 miles west-northwest of Key West. The P Tower is north of Key West at 40 miles, and the S Tower northwest of Key West at 56 miles.

A boat’s profile rose up on the horizon directly ahead of us, and we hoped it wasn’t on our wreck. Everyone wants to be first on a spot, but whatever your position, D’Antoni noted, it’s important to observe angling etiquette at towers and wrecks and respect everyone’s right to fish. Go upwind and upcurrent and drift down in your turn, and you might even ask what’s happening before starting to fish. We were lucky; the boat was a shrimper farther away.

Cobia begin leaving the area as water temps reach the mid- to upper 70's

Before we anchored, D’Antoni pulled up over the wreck to see which way the wind and tide pushed us. That prepared him for setting the anchor and getting the wreck downcurrent so our chum would pull fish off the wreck. We used block chum and chopped-up fresh mojarra, though any kind of cut fish works to put more substance in the chum. We were in about 40 feet, and the average depth of wrecks out there is about 60 feet, D’Antoni said.

“Let’s get a pitch bait ready in the livewell, a pinfish, for any followers that swim up, and a bucket with a few more live baits,” D’Antoni said. “You need lots of rods ready for what might show—African pompano, muttons, wahoo, amberjack. Almost anything you want is available. It’s an awesome time of year.”

We dropped a live pinfish to the bottom on a sliding sinker rig with just enough egg weight to hit the bottom, but not so much that the fish would feel the weight. D’Antoni puts swivels on cobia rigs and leaves a tag end where the Bimini twist connects to the swivel to keep the egg weight from sliding down the leader to the hook. He uses 15- or 30-pound test on spinning tackle with a 50-pound fluorocarbon leader, and a 4/0 circle hook on 15-pound or a 5/0 circle with 30-pound line. He likes circle hooks to increase the hookup ratio, to ease hook removal and to lessen the damage on release fish.