We have been on a nice roll the last week or so catching Sails in the morning and then Tuna’s or snappers later in the day. Two days ago we had 3 Sails in the morning and then anchored down in 185′ and caught another Sail out there as well as 6 big Mutton Snappers, these fish were all over 12 lbs. The following day on an afternoon 1/2 day we caught 5 20lb Tuna, 1 big Mutton and a bunch of Cuda’s.
Don’t you love it when a plan comes together. Today we hoped to catch Saifish in the morning and Tuna in the afternoon and that exactly what we did. We caught live ballyhoo first thing and within 5 minutes of leaving the bait patch we were hooked up to a double header of Sails; two of a group of five which were chasing ballyhoo on the reef edge. In addition to the double we caught 2 more singles and lost 2 we had hooked. We spent the mid day hours anchored on the reef edge-not much, some jacks, a small Mutton, missed a couple of Grouper, several sharks. another Sailfish bite. We began Tuna Fishing about 3:15 but it didn’t get good until close to 4:00- from then on it was non stop, we ended up catching 9 Tuna’s in the next hour.
Back to back cold fronts have dropped the water temps significantly over the last 10 days. This will greatly improve the fishing by driving Tuna, Kingfish and Sailfish into our area to escape even colder temps north of us. The improvement is already obvious- big kings are becomming more common- we had several in the 35lb class in the last several days. Also the Ballyhoo are thick along the reef edge which has attracted lots of Sails, Cero, Jacks and even Dolphin close to the shallow reefs. Casting to these fish as they chase the schools of Ballyhoo is a lot of fun. We’ve been seeing as many as 3 or 4 Sails at a time. Several days ago we found a group of 8 20lb Dolphin prowling in 25′ right on top of the reef. Blackfin Tuna are beginning to fill in on the deep wrecks, this fishery has been slow to start but is finally getting into high gear.
Pretty day with light south wind. Ran offshore and stopped on two seperate weedlines looking for Dolphin. Didn’t get any bites so we ended up back on the reef edge anchored and chumming. Caught 20 head of Yellowtail, 1 10lb Mutton Snapper and 5 or 6 Cero before returning to the dock at noontime.
We had south wind and lumpy seas in the morning, with the wind deminishing and the sea state improving as the day went on. We started deadbaiting in 180′-200′ and caught some Dolphin and also 1 out of 3 Sailfish bites. At midday we caught live ballyhoo and spent the afternoon livebaiting. The afternoon produced another Sailfish bite and several more Dolphin along with Cero, bonito and kingfish.
Caught live Ballyhoo today and worked hard at Sailfishing. We ended up catching 3 Sails on the day. We had a few other bites from Cero, barracuda, kingfish and bonito.
Yesterday was our final day of a three day trip and it was pretty much kick-ass! It was slick calm in the morning after a south wind the day before so I looked for and found a little shoestring weedline with a current edge in about 250′ which had Dolphin on it. We caught a dozen or so Dolphin including one about 18lbs in a couple of hours, then went in on the reef up to the east. Chumming with small live pilchards we got the big “flag” yellowtail up on the surface busting on the live baits, good fun. We ended up with 25 head of “flags” also caught Cero and 3 or 4 Kings up to 20lbs a Black Grouper and a big Yellowjack. Speedo baits showed up in the slick and we caught a few after we saw a Wahoo lurking around. We hooked the Wahoo but lost him when the wire kinked in mid fight. All in all good action all day long.
We are two days into a three day charter. The first day was pretty tough. We ran way west looking for good reef fishing and instead found either stagnant current or current against the wind. We caught a few snapper and grouper but all in all not much considering how far we looked. Today was considerably better. We found good westerly current on the reef edge and had a nice catch of decent Yellowtail, probably 30 head. We also had 6 or 8 Cero and a bunch of Little Tunny bonitos. Sharks showed up and ate a bunch of fish off so we made a throw on the live ballyhoo and spent the last two hours out in the blue water slow trolling. We had 4 Sailfish on, caught one of them and a gaffer Dolphin.
The fall run of small sailfish was much in evadence today with many boats reporting 10-20lb sails right along the reef edge- as shallow as 30′ out to about 120′. We caught one right away in the morning and raised a full sized Sail who wouldn’t eat. We also caught a 20lb Blackfin Tuna. In the afternoon we tried two reef spots with modest success- Cero, Yellowtail and Grey Snapper. Strong current made the reef fishing a challenge.
We ran down to the end of the bar and found east current and blue water. Slow trolled live Ballyhoo but got no pelagic bites. We anchored on the end and chummed with Pilchards. We caught Cero, Yellowtail and 4 Cobia, 2 we kept about 25 lbs and 2 we released.
