Fishing Reports
Happy New Year!
Report Date: January 1, 2007
I would like to wish everyone a Great New Year! I would also like to thank all my clients, both new and old for a great year of fishing. 2006 may have been one of the best years for me. We did well in tournaments winning the Islamorada Swordfish Tournament, 3rd place Heaviest Fish in the Miami Swordfish Tournament, winning the Florida Swordfish Series, and 2nd place in the Fort Lauderdale Billfish Tournament. 2006 brought in a new boat and motors (thank you SeaVee, Mercury, and TR-1), and almost a complete new line of tackle (thank you Biscayne Rods and Aluetecnos Reels). Fishing was great as well. I had my best day ever sailfishing catching 21 out 26 sailfish in one day, and that day is still so vivid since we did that with only one angler and in a half a day. We had so many great days of fishing that this report simply can’t touch on all of them, but we caught a bunch of swordfish including a few 300 pound plus swordfish, a tremendous amount of sailfish, some big dolphin and kingfish, and a bunch of yellowfin tuna in the Bahamas. All this couldn’t be done with great clients, great sponsors and great mates! I am extremely thankful to all of them as without everyone’s help – all this couldn’t be accomplished.
Next year will be even better as I will work even harder to make every trip an enjoyable and productive one. I am looking forward to the tournament season. I have a new set of great clients in David MacKoul, Sasha Gupta, Fredo and Jim that have booked all the tournaments. These guys are gung ho and are ready to go. Besides all the sailfish tournaments we are also going to give the BBC (Bahamas Billfish Challenge) a try this year. We will be fishing on David’s new 43 foot sportfish. It should be exciting and a lot of fun.
As far as the fishing here in the past couple of weeks, it has been great. We did have a two slow days, but for the most part the sailfishing has been excellent. We averaged about 3 – 4 sails a day and have two very good days catching 8 out 12 one day and 7 out 11 the other day. Sailfishing should remain strong well into April. Besides the sailfish, we also have been catching a good amount of dolphin and some nice ones mixed in. Just yesterday we caught a beautiful 36 pound bull dolphin on the kite. It is quite the thrill to watch a big dolphin crash a kite bait and put up an aerial show. A few days prior we caught a 26 pound dolphin on a spinner which definitely put up a fight. We have also been catching kingfish. Some days the kings have been so thick, that it is difficult to catch anything else. Although we haven’t caught one (but haven’t really targeted them either) there have been quite a few African Pompano around as well as some very good sized wahoo.
I have a few days open next week and then only one or two open days for the rest of the month, so give me a call and let’s plan our next trip!
Tight Lines,
Capt. Dean Panos