Spring Is Here

Report Date: May 12, 2013

  The fishing is spring is supposed to consist of sailfish, kingfish, blackfin tuna and mahis. In the past few weeks, the kingfish have shown up, and the mahis and the sails continue to bite. The only fish that has been missing has been the blackfin tunas. A week or so ago a few blackfins were caught and yesterday we ended up catching 4 blackfins with the biggest one at 36.4 pounds. The reason I know the exact weight of that fish is that we were fishing the Pompano Saltwater Shootout with a group of guys that usually charter me for a few sailfish tournaments. This year due to conflicting schedules, we opted out of the sailfish tournament and chose to fish this one. The kingfish are usually pretty thick up to the north this time of year and the majority of the teams fish from Pompano to Jupiter. The kingfish bite up north though has been very slow the past week. The day before the tournament I was fishing with another great client (Rich G.) and we had a superb day with big kings, sails, bonitos etc. down in Miami. The biggest king was 38 pounds. So with the fishing slow up north and a good day in Miami the day before, I decided to make a right out of Pompano and fish Miami. I can tell you that there were only a few boats out of the 135 boats entered that fished Miami that day. We started out a bit slow and caught some small kingfish. A good friend of mine was fishing the tourney as well and was fishing in the same area as us and already had some good kings in the box. I decided to stick it out and about mid morning we had a good fish on. It turned out to be a 34-pound wahoo, which was big enough to win top wahoo of the tournament. We hooked a huge king on the kite and got him close to the boat. This kingfish was between 45 and 50 pounds. As we had this fish close, another king ate one of the flatlines, wrapped around the big fish’s line and cut us off. It was a bit heartbreaking, as that big king would have helped us out immensely. Not to fret, we continued fishing and ended up catching 4 blackfin tunas, The biggest tuna, as I mentioned earlier, was a whopping 36.4 pounds and won us top tuna of the tournament. With the tunas in the box, I headed north to try to catch some kings. We did catch one small kingfish but it was big enough to qualify (11 .4 pounds). We ended up with 145 pounds of qualifying weight, which placed us in 9th place out of 135 boats, plus we won top tuna and top wahoo. I forgot to mention we also had 10 sailfish on during that day. That is what spring fishing should be like.

We also did a couple of swordfish trips this week. My client was from California and has a boat in Mexico. He brought two captains from Puerto Vallarta Mexico with him to learn a bit about this daytime swordfishing that we do. We all got on board and headed out to the sword grounds. After explaining the process, we dropped down the first bait. Within 30 seconds of hitting bottom, the rod bowed over and we were hooked up. Juan from Mexico, got into the harness, pulled the rod out of the rod holder and fought this swordfish stand up the entire time. After pumping the fish to the surface, we got the swordfish up top and clearly could see it was a very decent fish. I was guessing 300 pounds. Juan continued to keep the pressure on her and soon we had here boatside and then in the boat. Now with the fish in the boat, it was clear that she was somewhere between 400 and 450 pounds. She had a 92”fork length and incredibly large girth all the way to her tail. To top it off she was a “pumpkin” (orange colored meat). We filleted her at the dock and Joe ended up shipping most of the steaks back to California. The rest of the day was quiet, but with a trophy like that caught on stand up tackle, it was another amazing day on the water!

Every trip is not like these two mentioned in this report, but unless you go fishing, you can never have a great day on the water. Look us up next time you want to go and lets make it a Great Day!

P.S. Don’t forget to make you plans for the Bahamas this summer. I already have 4 trips planned so space will run out soon.

Tight Lines,
Capt. Dean Panos
www.doubledcharters.com
[email protected]
(954) 805-8231

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