Private Jet from Miami to Islamorada

The village calls itself the sport fishing capital of the world, and the geography is the reason: shallow flats run for miles behind the islands on the bay side, and the deep blue of the Gulf Stream sits ten to twenty miles out on the other. Two completely different days of fishing leave from the same dock. Which one you want decides the hour more than anything else on this page. The flats are read off the tide, the blue water off the forecast, and both tend to start early. Say at the enquiry which it is, and the landing time is set backwards from the dock rather than forwards from the city. A boat, a guide and the gear are arranged with the flight, the same way as bonefishing and flats access runs on the other routes we fly.

A few miles off the Atlantic shore the reef line runs the length of the chain, and off Islamorada it carries a lighthouse standing straight out of the water. The coral around it sits at snorkel depth in places, which makes it the one reef stop out here that works for a party where not everybody dives. It needs a settled sea rather than a particular season, so it is worth naming as the point of the trip when you send the date. Then the morning gets built around the water rather than the other way round, which is exactly what an aircraft that ignores the afternoon buys you.

At mile marker 77.5 the tarpon come in under the docks and are fed by hand, which is the rare attraction out here that needs no boat, no weather window and no swimming. Fish of that size at arm's length is the thing children remember from the whole trip. It is a stop rather than an outing, and it sits in the middle of the village: the docks lie between the mile markers that bracket the four islands, so the drive to them is short from anywhere along the chain. It fits into a day that is really about something else. Parties who come for this and nothing else usually pair it with the beach at the south end and go home the same evening.

Behind the islands Florida Bay is shallow, pale and almost always flat, and at low water parts of it dry into open sandbars with nothing standing on them. Boats anchor off them for the afternoon and the water stays shin deep a long way out. This is the part of an Islamorada day that the sea decides and not the aircraft: the bars exist on the tide and nothing moves them. We read it for your date before the boarding time is fixed, which only works because the departure is yours to choose. Add water toys if the party would rather spend the hours in the water than on the sand.

Natural beach is scarce in the Keys, which is why the two here matter: a stretch at the south end with a long boardwalk out over the shallows, and a park at the north end with sand, a marina and space for a group. Both sit directly on the Overseas Highway, so neither needs a boat. The highway itself is the other half of the island's character, a single road with water on both sides for most of its length. Flying in means you see it as a line from above rather than as three hours of queue, and the only part of it you actually drive is the half hour up from Marathon.

Two small islands off the bay side reachable only by boat, one a state historic site that was a settlement before a hurricane took it, the other a hardwood hammock kept as it was. No cars, no bridges and no crowds, twenty minutes off the highway by water. They are the reason a boat is worth booking even on a day that is not about fishing, and they close early. A morning landing leaves time for both and an afternoon one for neither, which is the clearest example on this page of what the flight is actually buying.

On Windley Key an old quarry cut straight through ancient coral and left the fossil reef standing in the rock face, walkable on a short trail. At mile marker 83 a museum lays out the history of diving, and at 82 a stone monument remembers the 1935 hurricane that took the railway and the people working on it. Together they are the wet weather answer and the reason an Islamorada day does not collapse if the sea is up. All three are minutes apart on the highway, and the car that brought you up from Marathon is the same one that covers them.

A private jet charter from Miami to Islamorada also works as the first leg rather than the whole day. Marathon sits in the middle of the chain, so Key West is a short hop southwest and the top of the Keys a short drive northeast. Some parties fly down, spend the morning on the water here and end the evening somewhere else in the chain, which turns one island into island hopping or a wider day out by air. What a second leg spends is daylight, so flag it with the date: it changes the fuel and the load, which the baggage guidance sets out. The full island guide sits on the Islamorada destination page, the field the aircraft uses on the Marathon page, and anything larger than luggage runs as island logistics.