I Can't Believe It!

Report Date: February 14, 2023

Can’t believe we are already in mid-February. Winter and spring are my favorite times of year to fish in South Florida. Winter is my favorite season for sailfish and it’s almost half gone already. There is nothing like waking up in the morning, the day after a cold front arrives and there is a brisk North wind blowing. The whole ride to the marina I’m hoping there is north current and blue water to go along with the North wind. Even after 30 years of chasing sailfish around I still get excited about a good day of kite fishing for sailfish. We have been lucky to get quite a few cold fronts this year. Sometimes there has been blue water and N current to go along with the fronts and sometimes there hasn’t. Even with that, I can honestly say this has been the best January for sailfish that we have had in at least the past 5 years. We have caught 5 times more sailfish this January than last January. We still haven’t broken double digits though this year. Our best was 9 sailfish releases in one day but in that week alone we caught 30 sailfish in 5 trips. That’s pretty good and consistent.

Besides sailfish, there have been a handful of other species caught. We had an epic month for big blackfin tunas. That has slowed down a little bit, but it’s not uncommon to still catch one or two big blackfins. Our best catch this past week was a decent size wahoo. The wahoo ate a kite bait and as everyone knows, wahoo’s teeth are like razors. We hooked the fish on a fluorocarbon leader without a wire trace. We got so lucky that the circle hook was placed perfectly in the jaw. The customer did a great job of staying tight and we were able to get her onboard. It’s one thing to catch wahoo high speed trolling, but when you hook one on light tackle 20 lb. gear, it is truly amazing. These fish swim so fast and change directions instantly. It’s like they are not even hooked. Although we have caught plenty of wahoo throughout the years, each one is still awesome.

One fishery I was not able to get in on this past month was swordfishing, and that was as shame as there were finally some big swordfish being caught. Biggest I heard was 429 pounds and a few others in the low 400’s as well. Even a big bluefin tuna was caught while deep dropping for swordfish. Hopefully when we get out there again, the big girls will still be around.

With February half done, it is really the time to book your winter sailfish trips. Let’s go out there and see what we can catch and hopefully find that blue water and current right after a cold front and rack up some double-digit releases!

Tight Lines,
Capt. Dean Panos

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