Yearly Archives: 2007

THAT’S MORE LIKE IT! The last week or so the fishing has been really slow with nothing but throw back Dolphin around, so it was great to have an excellent day today. Start with a box of decent Dolphin, full sized schoolies, and gaffers and add to that A White Marlin Release, followed by a Blue Marlin Release. Talk about right place right time! The White was about 60lbs caught on 30lb tackle and put on a great show with the water so calm. The Blue was about 140lbs also caught on 30lb and took the better part of an hour to bring boatside. Interestingly, the Blue bite just moments after we released the White while we were still putting the spread back out. Both fish ate flat line swimming ballyhoo in the vicinity of the East Crack. Congratulations to Jim Depapa and his group.

Slow fishing the last couple of days. We’ve just come off a weekend with too many boats fishing for too few Dolphin. The report is the same for everyone, lots of micro Dolphin, call them “grasshoppers”, or “shakers”?, either way too small to keep. Very few decent fish around. Hopefully better days are coming.

Stayed inshore yesterday because the Dolphin fishing has been real slow the last couple of days. We tried the end of the bar to start with and did nothing kite fishing and slow trolling with big pilchards. Ran up to “western” and anchored down trying for Yellowtail… big mistake, too much current. Got out of there and moved out to 180’, the further east I worked the brighter the water was with more and more current. Some of the other boats were talking about a few big blackfins being caught on live bait, so I Set up Kite fishing again in the vicinity of the Airplane wreck. We ended up with a 36lb Blackfin and another Blackfin in the 20s along with a couple gaffer Dolphin. The 36lb Blackfin was the heaviest we’ve caught all season, a really nice fish.

Excellent Dolphin fishing during spur of the moment trip. Rain squalls and 15-20 knot winds seemed like inauspicious conditions for a group who didn’t leave the dock until 11:00AM. Running offshore we found several Frigate birds patrolling in 500’ of water. Both birds were on 20lb class Dolphin, and we caught 3 of these fish. We ran another 3 or 4 miles offshore and found a pallet, which was loaded with “gaffers”?, and big schoolies, which made our day. After we left the pallet I ran back inshore and found a couple more frigate birds, which were on 20-30lb fish. We caught one and missed one, which was probably the biggest fish of the day. We ended up with 25 fish of which 3 were over 20, and many were in that “teenage”? size (13-19lbs) On the way in, I was pleased to overhear one of the clients tell his buddy, “boy the fishing was better than I expected it to be”!

Duie Latta, and his son, along with well-known skiff guide Tim Carlisle caught one out of three Swordfish they hooked while fishing the East Crack area last night. The Sword was estimated at 50lbs and released. The group also released one shark. Fresh easterly breezes of 15 knots, made for sloppy conditions.