Fishing Reports
Variety
Report Date: October 12, 2009
The past two weeks have been non-stop fishing. We have been doing a variety of trips from fishing the edge, fishing the wrecks, day time and night time swordfishing as well as dolphin fishing in the Gulfstream. We have had some great trips with lots of action, but also have had some very slow trips. The slow trips have mostly been on the swordfish trips. We did 3 daytime sword trips and caught a fish on one of those trips. The night trips have been a little bit better as we have had 5 night trips and caught swordfish on 3 of those 5 trips. October is a great month for swords, especially day time, so I do expect it to get a lot better very soon.
Fishing on the edge and fishing on the wrecks has been much better. We have had great action from kingfish, bonitas, skipjack tunas, a few blackfin tunas and a few cobias. The wrecks have been loaded with big AJ’s and Almaco jacks. Dolphin fishing has remained slow although we did catch some dolphin on a few of our swordfish trips.
A few months back I got a call from new clients that wanted to book four consecutive days in October. They wanted to try some wreck fishing, some live bait fishing, and one day sword trip. October isn’t exactly prime season in South Florida, but I was hoping to get a few good days in. Cory, Shawn and Bonnie arrived and we had four great days of fishing. The first day we had a little bit of wind so we went live baiting and caught plenty of kingfish, a few cudas and sharks. It was a fun day with plenty of action. The next day Cory wanted to try some vertical butterfly jigging on the wrecks. First thing in the morning we tried one of the local wrecks and had great action on big amberjacks and almaco jacks. We then went south to catch some more bait and try a few more wrecks. After catching bait, I spotted quite a few birds working an area offshore. I headed over there and found a huge ball of sardines getting hammered by the birds and by skipjack and blackfin tunas. It was something right out of National Geographic. The sardines took refuge under the boat. We sabikied a few and caught some blackfins and skipjacks using the sardines as bait. Cory even caught a decent size skipjack tuna on fly. We hit a few more wrecks and caught some more fish and then caught some more kingfish live baiting at the end of the day. The third day we headed offshore to look for mahis. We went quite a ways and even after finding some Sargasso weed and debris, we never found the mahis. We did find some porpoises that quickly ran to our bow and rode with us for quite a while. We headed back in and hit the wrecks and reef again with more action on kings, and AJ’s. The last day we decided to try for a day time swordfish. We got to our first stop and dropped down a bait. Within three minutes we got bit and were fighting our first daytime sword. After a while we got the swordfish up to the boat. It is quite the sight to see a swordfish during the day under the boat. Their colors are awesome with bright purple, silver and blue. We got the fish into the boat and it weighed 120 pounds. We made a few more drops, but didn’t get any more hookups. We ran back in and finished the day with a few more kings. It was a great 4 days of fishing with good customers that I hope will come back every year.
We have a lot more trips booked for this month and next. Sailfish season should be starting soon and I can’t wait. Now is the time to book those winter trips, so give me a call and let’s make it happen.
Tight Lines,
Capt. Dean Panos