Good fishing yesterday. We started out in the ocean, in about 100′ of water. We were catching a few bonito and kingfish on the reef. Decent action. We also caught a big horse-eyed jack on the troll, a kind of odd ball catch for Fort Lauderdale deep sea fishing. The waves were slightly rough, and a couple of the customers began to feel nauseous. We came in from the fishing trip early, but we weren’t about to give up entirely.
We’ve been seeing some big barracuda and some big tarpon in the intercoastal so we gave that a try for a little while. We put out some live baits on light tackle rods and dragged them around the intercoastal waterway a little bit. We went by some pilings and some docks were we’ve caught big fish before. This one spot we tried, the bait started getting very nervous. Capt. Adam yelled down, “he’s nervous ’cause he’s in a bad neighborhood.” Well he sure was because that bait did eveything he could to get out of the water.
Something big was on his tail and he wanted to be anywhere but where he was. A huge splash and then zzzziiiinnnnggg of the reel. Hooked up! It was a nice fish on light tackle, and although we saw the bite, we couldn’t identify the fish. There was one of 3 posssibilities. It could have been a tarpon, but tarpon usually jump immediately after they get hooked up and this fish was tugging downward. It could have been a big jack crevelle, but this fish was fighting much stronger than a jack crevelle usually fights. And lastly it could have been a big barracuda. Capt. Adam yelled down, “I think it’s a big ’Cuda” and just about the same time he said that, the fish breached the water and skyrocketed. Yup, it was a big barracuda. A nice one, about 45 incher. Good fish for the intercoastal, and hungry because he ate about a 2 pound live blue runner.
After an exciting fight of dodging boats and wrapping around pilings, we got him to the boat. Very cool gamefish and even though the customers got seasick, they still got to catch something very cool. We had caught a few kingfish earlier, so they had some dinner fish, and a trophy fish. Good day of sportfishing.
