Over the past 28 years I have fished the Florida Keys during the winter months January through March. I am well aware that May and June are the best times to be in the Keys for Tarpon. Realistically May and June are the best months to fish any species in North America and I prefer to fish for stripers during May and June in New England, so I have passed up Prime Tarpon Time. This past winter I chose to delay my Keys trip by one month and extending our trip into April. We arrived in the Keys February 9th and had the most wonderful four days of fishing weather possible. The days were hot and the water temps were in the mid-70’s, in pockets, and best of all very little wind. I really believed that I had outsmarted “Mother Nature”……but stop! From February 15th until March 31st, we had cold front after cold roll in with strong winds from 15-25 almost everyday. We may have had half dozen fishable days mixed in. The water temps in Florida Bay never reached 75 until the latter part of March. We were fortunate to jump several tarpon and land two on the fly during our nine week stay. We also landed two very nice permit on live bait. We also landed several redfish, jacks, sea trout and a snook with spinning tackle. All in all the vacation was great and we did outwit Mother Nature in removing ourselves from the severe winter in New England, however, Mother Nature got even with us and gave us the windiest March that anyone could recall. So, nobody outsmarts Mother Nature- ever!