Fishing Reports
RED HOT SWORDING!
Report Date: November 11, 2005
We are alive and well in Miami. The fishing is getting good, so lets go fishing. Hurricane Wilma has come and gone and life is back to normal. Hotels are open, there are no more gas lines and everyone has power. We suffered very minor damage to the house and no damage to the Double D. Thanks to all my friends and clients who called and offered help or just wished us well. The only real damage we had has been the vast amount of cancellations the week before the hurricane, the week of and the week after. In the last week though, we have been lucky to have gone on 4 sword trips and one day trip.
Starting with the day, the fishing on the edge has been fairly good, with a mixed bag of fish being caught. The primary fish has been the dolphin. We even caught a nice bull dolphin one night while swordfishing that tipped the scales at 38 pounds. Most of the dolphin have been as shallow as 50 feet of water out to the edge, which has varied from 150 feet in depth to over 600 feet today. We have also been lucky enough to catch a few sailfish on every trip. Sailfish season is starting and this minor front we got last night should kick things up. Besides the sails and dolphin, there?s been scattered kings and a stray wahoo or two. This is also the time of year to head across to Bimini and do some high speeding for those hoo?s. I?m sure the people in Bimini would appreciate some of our business.
Now lets get to the swordfishing. We have caught at least one swordfish on every trip this week, but one. That one trip we had seven bites total, 3 fish pulling drag and managed to lose them all. It was also very rough with a NE wind blowing at 25 knots. For those that know the Gulfstream, that means waves up to 9 foot. On the next few trips we caught as many as 3 fish and were back at the dock before midnight.
Then we have last night?s trip. I mentioned that we had a trip were we had 7 bites, 3 fish pulling drag and lost them all. Well I told that charter that the next night that it looked good and was calm, I would give them a call. I called them up and we headed out Thursday night greeted with flat calm seas and a beautiful moonlit night. Before it even got dark, we had our first fish on. After about 20 minutes of a pretty decent fight, we got the fish within 30 feet of the leader, when it decided to head back deep. The angler was pretty much beat up and decided to hand off the rod. Much to everyone?s dismay, the hook pulled and we were all a bit disappointed. In the next hour we hooked another two swords and you guessed it we lost them as well. We were now 0 for 3. I started to wonder that maybe this crew just didn?t have the right karma. My mate, Jimmy, kept everyone?s spirits high and it didn?t take long when we had another fish on. As we fought that one we got another double. Now we had a triple-header going. Within a few more minutes with almost everybody fighting a fish we had another one on. Now we had a quad of swordfish on with all of the fishing going nuts in every possible direction. Talk about complete and utter chaos. Jimmy and I tried to keep our cool and instruct anglers to go up and over and around each other as I kept the boat heading hopefully in the right direction. I have been swording for quite a long time and have had many tripleheaders, but this was my first quad. Unfortunately or fortunately, one of the fish came off. We still had three on and two of them were coming dangerously close to each over. We managed to keep them apart and we got the first one over the side, which was a very respectable 65 inch (LJFL) 140 pound sword. Next came one that was 56 inches and then we release the last one that was about the same size as the second one. We now had two fish on the deck and released one. We were now 3 for 6. We only stayed out another 2 or 3 hours but had another 5 fish on of which we landed 3 of them. We released 2 of those three and put one about 62 inches on the deck. The bites were on both live baits and dead baits and it didn?t seem to matter what depth the bait was at. We had bites from 300 foot to the surface. At total I would venture to say we had at least 15 bites, had 11 fish pulling drag and successfully caught 6 of them in which we released three. That is incredible action anywhere in the world and South Florida definitely has some world-class swordfishing right at its doorstep!
Nights like this don?t happen that often, but they do happen. You can?t experience this kind of action sitting on the couch, so come, give us a shout and lets go catch em!
Tight Lines,
Capt. Dean Panos