Spring Is Here!

Report Date: April 16, 2017

We waited all year for this and now spring is upon us. We have had some pretty incredible fishing the past three weeks and it is definitely going to continue for at least another month or two. The sailfish bite has been great and besides catching up to 10 sailfish a day, it has been very consistent averaging 5 or more sailfish per day. We had another double digit day as well as two more days with 8 sailfish releases and every single trip has yielded at least a couple of sailfish for us. It is so awesome to have both old and new customers faces light up as we hook up to the first billfish of the day. We have truly been lucky to have such good sailfishing so close to shore.

Besides sailfish, the news for this season has been the amount of yellowfin tunas being caught. I would say that most years we average maybe one or two yellowfins per year on this coast and some years like last year we never saw a yellowfin tuna off of Miami. This year so far we have caught 5 yellowfin tunas. They are not as big as the ones we usually see but are in the 25 to 45 pound class, which is still plenty of fun on 20-pound tackle and even better on the grill or sashimi. Besides the occasional yellowfin tuna we are starting to see more and more blackfin tunas and have caught multiples on quite a few days. April through June are the best months to target the blackfin tunas and I look forward to catching quite a few more. They are one of my favorite fish to catch.
Besides the tunas and sailfish, there are also some decent kingfish around and the past few days the wind has been blowing hard from the east and more and more mahis are showing up on the edge. The mahis we have caught have been schoolies but there was a 55-pound bull and a 50-pound bull caught just this week.
We did another trip to Bimini this month. We tried wahoo trolling for a few hours but we are probably a bit too late in the season for that so we switched gears and went bottom fishing for yellowtail snappers and also did some deep dropping. The yellowtail fishing went very well with quite a few yellowtail snappers, some amberjacks, some groupers, and a few cudas we got to see some really big sharks. The deep dropping was also very good with quite a few yelloweye snappers and some queen snappers. This week I am actually heading to the Exumas and to Cat Island and hopefully will find some billfish, tunas and mahis. Who knows maybe even a wahoo or two?
That leaves only one week left in April and I do have two open dates in the last week of April. May is almost half full and the fishing for sailfish, tunas, mahis and kings will be at its best during April and May. If you like variety and like to take home fish to eat, this is the time of year to book that trip, so give me a call and lets set it up!

Tight Lines,
Capt. Dean Panos

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