Winter Cold Fronts

Report Date: January 28, 2011

The cold fronts are now rolling through every week or so which is great for sailfishing. In normal years a front would come through, you may have an hour or so of rain and heavy wind. The front passes and you get that freshening north wind and sunny skies. The only issue this year and most say is due to El Nino is that with every front we get one or two whole days of solid rain and high wind before the front. This has created a whole bunch of cancellations and postponed trips. It is one thing to fish in the wind, but it certainly is not very pleasurable to fish in gale force winds with non-stop rain. We are actually supposed to be pre fishing for a tournament today, but the weather has forced us to stay at the dock.
The good news is that once the front does go completely through, the fishing has been fairly good. We have successfully caught a sailfish on our past 15 trips with the exception of one trip. That was Ok too as we had the same people for 4 days and in those 4 days we raised 18 sails. Our best day we had 10 shots. Often during our charters we get questions about lifting a sailfish into the boat for a quick picture and then release it. It is actually against the law to remove a billfish from the water that is intended to be released. We usually take a picture of the sailfish in the water with the angler leaning over the side so both the angler and the fish are in the same frame. After explaining the reasons why a billfish must not be removed from the water (removal of slime coat which will lead to infection and death, internal organs not supported by the weight of the water), most people understand. I am attaching a link from the Billfish Foundation that further explains this http://www.billfish.org/news/keep-em-water-safe-handling-tips/

Besides sailfish, there have also been quite a few mahis and some kingfish on the edge. Most of the mahis are good size schoolies and a few gaffers. There really is nothing better than catching a few mahis for dinner in between your sailfish strikes. The kings we have been catching though are typical of wintertime and are mostly 5 to 15 pounds. On an occasion you will catch a wahoo. We had a 50-pound plus wahoo make a fool out of us last week. The fish aired in the sky so we could visually see what it was and then went and ate 3 or 4 of our kite baits and missed the hook each time. To add insult to injury we put out a flatline with wire and he ate that too and bit the line above the wire as well. I guess that's why he got that big.

Bookings are fairly decent and February is a bit over half full so call now and lets set up those winter sailfish trips while I still have some openings.

Tight Lines,
Capt. Dean Panos

Back to Main Fishing Report Page