Action Good Before Frances

Report Date: September 3, 2004

Hurricane Frances is forecasted to come our way, so we have pulled the boat out of the water and have boarded up the house. What a shame too, since the fishing was really getting pretty good before the hurricane threat. We had a few swordfish trips and a few day trips last week, and all the trips were very good. We caught swordfish on all our trips and the best trip we had, we ended up catching a 200-pound sword followed by a 150 pounder. The night started out slow, and we didn?t get our first bite until 11:45am. We just ended our first drift and set up on our second one. After we got our baits in the water, my customer made a toast to the fish gods and as customary, poured a little beer into the water. No lie, as soon as the beer hit the water, the deep tip rod bent over and we were hooked solid with a decent fish. After close to an hour of lots of pressure we boated a 71-inch (lower jaw ? fork length), approximately 200 pound sword. We set out the lines again, and a few minutes later, I watch the short jug pop off. We had another decent fish on. While we are fighting the second fish, the middle jug goes off. We got tight on the third fish for a split second, but didn?t stay connected. After 45 minutes we boated the second fish. Fork length was 65 inches and weight was around 140 ? 150 pounds. That fish was foul hooked and we ended up bringing him up tail first.

Our day trips were productive as well. We spent the trips fishing on the edge catching a few sails, some kings, bonitas, and cudas. Our best day we had 4 sailfish. It?s good to see the sails again, and September can be a decent month for them. You can see a change in the fishing patterns already. There was plenty of bait along the beaches. We had strong north current and clean blue water. We actually had a NE wind. It almost felt like winter, except it was a bit hot. The action though was definitely good. It was practically non-stop and you didn?t have a lot of time between bites. Our slowest times were right in the middle of the day, which is typical for late summer.

We now have to wait for Hurricane Frances to get on with her business. Hopefully she will leave us alone so we can get back to fishing. We have a few day trips booked for next week and are scheduled to go to Bimini for the weekend. Hopefully Frances didn?t do much damage there either. We have some trips open both day and night during September. I also have the Dark Side of the Moon tournament on Sept. 25th open. I would love to fish that tournament and hopefully win someone some money. The entry fees are pretty cheap and the payout is good. We are already booked for the Miami Swordfish Tournament, so this will be the last swordfish tournament of the year that we are open for. Give me a call and lets set something up.

Tight Lines and Good Fishing,
Capt. Dean Panos

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