Tunas are Here!

Report Date: May 9, 2015

  The big news since my last report is that the blackfin tunas are here and in very good numbers. For two weeks straight now, we have caught blackfin tunas on practically every trip. For the most part we have caught at least 2 per trip and up to 5 on one trip. Most of the tunas are in the 25 to 30 pound range and we did catch one pushing 35 pounds. They have been eating mostly kite baits but we also have caught quite a few on flatlines and some even on the deep lines. I love catching these tunas and am really excited about fishing on the edge for the next few weeks.

Besides the tunas, we are still catching sailfish but the numbers are down just a bit. Instead of 4 or 5 per trip, which is what you expect in the winter, we are catching one to three per trip. We did have a couple of days that the sailfish didn’t cooperate, but we switched gears and caught kingfish and tunas, or ran offshore and caught mahis.

We have had some ridiculously calm weather lately and we have taken advantage and ran offshore to hunt for mahis and this has been successful. There has been quite a bit of Sargasso weed in the Gulfstream and also quite a few frigate birds, so we have keened in on the birds and the weed and have managed to find mahis on each trip.

We also just finished fishing a small tournament last week. It was a 3-day tournament with 8 other charterboats. The tournament was the EFSA (European Federation of Sea Anglers) National Championship. There were different teams from Europe who were fishing on different boat every day. Billfish, tunas, mahis, wahoo and kingfish were the targeted species. We were lucky enough to win the tournament by catching sailfish, blackfin tunas, kingfish and mahis. It was a blast and each team that I had on my boat was a lot of fun and I truly enjoyed fishing with them. There wasn’t a lot of money involved but mostly bragging rights, which is fun as well.

Summer is basically just around the corner and now is really the time to make your plans for either day time sword trips, summer mahis trips or trips to the Bahamas. I only have 2 open dates in May and only 5 open dates in June. July is still pretty open so look at you calendar and lets go set up that trip and go catch some fish!!

Tight Lines,
Capt. Dean Panos

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