Frozen block chum carried by the currents attracts both bait and predatory mackerel.

He flung the net and caught ten ballyhoo. He hooked one in its lower jaw and wrapped its bill with wire. We tossed that bait back 30 feet and let it rest a minute. Only when we twitched it did we get the take and the blazing run of the cero mackerel.

Almost immediately, we took another bright cero on a live ballyhoo. We might have stayed there all day and had a good time, but we wanted to try to make it to the Gulf.

“Back in the Gulf, I’ll put a live blue runner on a kite for kings and drift smaller live baits like ballyhoo or pilchards back for ceros and Spanish,” Hassell said. “You’ll find schools of Spanish back there, and sometimes they run with bonitos, which are tougher to track. Out here on the Atlantic side, schools of Spanish are always working near the Northwest and Southwest channels this time of year. Watch for feeding birds, and troll or cast a silver spoon to them.”

That silver casting spoon on a light wire leader gives you enough range to reach those schools and a sure-fire offering to match what they’re after. Targeting them beneath birds is probably the most popular method for catching ceros and Spanish near Key West, but it wasn’t going to be ours that day, because by the time we reached the mouth of Key West Harbor, winds had picked up even higher. We didn’t want to punish ourselves with a rough ride, so we scuttled plans for the Gulf.

Yet we didn’t want to call it a day either, so we ducked into the harbor and headed up the Northwest Channel, which runs like a piscatorial superhighway between the Atlantic and the Gulf. In winter, permit, cobia, kings, muttons, jacks, snapper and resident and seasonal tarpon use the channel to get around, and Key West Harbor is a rest stop along their way. So both the harbor and the Northwest Channel are good places to take cover and save a day of fishing during rough weather.

We went to the east, anchored at a spot along nearby Calda Channel, little more than a baitcaster’s throw from the island itself, and set up shop. All that marked on the depthfinder was a slight depression of a few feet, and what looked like a school of baitfish—good enough to attract mackerel.

Scale your tackle to the test to have the most fun with the inshore game. We had trout rods, 8-pound monofilament with a Bimini twist attached to a 25-pound leader with a blood knot, and an improved clinch knot to the terminal tackle—jig, lure or bait hook. No matter the terminal tackle, knots are preferred to swivels for their cleaner presentation to the fish, and because in schools, mackerel will hit that swivel in a flash and cut you off empty-handed, with spiteful frequency. Their excellent eyesight and voracious nature makes them slash at everything in hopes of finding a meal.

Frozen block chum.

The mackerel drill is similar to snappering—anchor, chum and wait till the scent gets out. You’ll get connected in a matter of minutes, but to what might depend on the tide. Spanish bite on any moving tide, but they might take a half an hour or so to show up. They probably bite better in slightly cloudy water, which we had. Very dirty water makes them wary of other predators. Use an oily chum like menhaden, and figure on going through a block every hour. At the same time, start tossing out chunks of cutbait, a few at a time. Fresh is better, of course, but frozen threadfins, ballyhoo or mullet work, too.

“Sometimes when you burn through that chum, after a while, you can see the Spanish cutting across the surface, and that’s when I like to go for them on fly,” Hassell said.

Flies, spoons, live shrimp and pilchards and ballyhoo, cutbait—Spanish and ceros take them all. A lot of people don’t, however, jig for Spanish on the bottom. But like their counterparts offshore, the kings, Spanish and ceros feed on the bottom as well, and that’s often where you’ll find them first.