Adequate dock space makes this a favorite destination for boaters.

Those days Key West was Cayo Hueso, a real paradise,” says native Conch Armando Parro about his youth in Key West in the Forties. “At Porter’s Dock, an old wooden dock at the end of Duval Street, they used to pull Jewfish out of the harbor that weighed 400 pounds. We could drop net for lobster there and get a hundred pounds in a night. The harbor itself was nothing but fishing fleets and shrimpboats.”

These days, restaurants and charterboats have replaced shrimp and fish houses around the harbor, and now cruise ships, not conch sellers, come calling. But, Key West harbor still figures prominently in the fortunes of local anglers.

According to Jessica Mazzola of Monroe County’s Tourist Development Council, in 2003 an estimated million and a half tourists stayed overnight in the Lower Keys and approximately 20 percent of them—300,000—came to fish. For many of those anglers, whether they charter a trip or bring their own boats, Key West’s harbor, officially called Truman Harbor, is the center of the action. A strategic place for fishing and for boating, learning the harbor’s ins-and-outs gives you the home-field advantage in Key West’s angling game.

The harbor leads to primary routes of passage to all of Key West’s varied fisheries. Like spokes off a wheel, Calda Channel goes to the backcountry, the Northwest Channel to the Gulf, the Lakes Passage to the Marquesas and the west, and the Southwest Channel and Main Ship Channel lead south to the reef and offshore grounds. All those waterways lead fish to the harbor, where they find shelter from seasonal temperature extremes in its deep water, the deepest inshore water in the Lower Keys.

“In summer, it’s some of the coolest water around, and in winter, some of the warmest, depending on the tide,” says Capt. Phil Thompson.

For that reason, the harbor offers a spectacular winter-spring season for cobia, kings, tarpon, permit and snapper. It also offers a dependable, year-round fishery easily accessible from all nearby marinas, with good protection during rough weather, and comfortable fishing at night in the lights of Key West.

“During tarpon season,” Thompson says, “which begins in late February and peaks in April and May, everybody works the harbor. The flats boats work it early and move out when the light-tackle boats start chumming. And if there’s any better tarpon fishing at night in the world, I’d have to see it to believe it.”

The harbor’s surrounding channels and mangrove islands give flats anglers year-round shots at permit, bonefish, tarpon and other species.

“When that extreme weather, either hot or cold, improves,” Thompson says, “the fish move up from the harbor’s depths onto the adjacent flats. So in summer, and in winter, the flats next to the harbor can be some of the most productive around.

“In the summer, the Tower Flats, which stick into the harbor, are extremely productive,” Thompson adds. “They’re marked by four channels with water pouring in from the Gulf and they have the Atlantic waters on the other sides. A lot of tarpon, permit, sharks, snappers and other species cross those flats between the channels.”