Finally the fishing is what it should be and the past two weeks we have seen a great sailfish bite. Last week we fished every day and caught over 50 sailfish that week. Our best day we caught 12 followed by another day with 11. The bite was good regardless if we had wind or not and boy is it a lot of fun to catch a bunch of sailfish when the seas are flat calm. We have been using helium on the kite to keep our baits up and it is quite the sight to see a pack of sailfish moving in our your baits in slick calm water. We have also seen a lot of free jumpers and once you see them and line up in their path, it’s usually not long until you hook up with one or more sailfish. This week the wind came up a bit and the sailfish bite continued to be good, but the best bite was in the late afternoon. Unfortunately we have had a few ¾ day trips and another trip that ended early after we caught some fish and the anglers decided to hed in, so we missed out on the late bite this week. This is the time of year that the bite does get better in the afternoon and soon we will be doing more noon to 8pm trips targeting sails, tunas and big kings.
Besides the sailfish, there have been a few mahis around on the edge and the best part is that most of the mahis are decent in size, from 10 pounds all the way up to 30 pounds. We have also caught a few kingfish and some big kings mixed in. Our biggest kingfish last week weighed in at 38 pounds.
With the bite being better in the afternoon we have taken some mornings and fished on the wrecks. There have been some bruiser amberjacks and some groupers on the wrecks. The grouper season is closed so we had to throw them back. We also did some vertical jigging on the wrecks and that has really paid off. At times the vertical jigs have been out fishing the live baits. Besides all this, there have also been some cobias around and yesterday we saw a leatherback turtle on the surface and caught a decent cobia that was swimming with the turtle. There were a few more cobias with the turtle, but the turtle dove and the rest of the cobias followed it.
April and May are definitely my 2 favorite months to fish in Miami and as I mentioned earlier, the noon to 8pm trip, especially for the blackfin tunas. Last year we saw an epic tuna bite in the spring and we have already started catching some blackfins these past two weeks, so I am sure we will have another good year for those.
April is about 75% booked and so is May, so now is really the time to book those trips and lets go catch fish while the fishing is great!
Tight Lines,
Capt. Dean Panos