We’ve had a couple interesting catching on our sportfishing trips this week, so I thought I’d write a quick fishing report. Just about anything you could want to catch is biting right now. There’s been some kingfish and bonito action trolling the reef, snappers and groupers biting on the bottom around the shipwrecks and rock piles, dophin are scattered offshore with some wahoos mixed in, and for the big game fishermen out there, sharks and sailfish are here too. There’s been a smorgasbord of fish species being caught right now.
My game plan lately has been to just catch everything that swims. The reef is always a good place to start on any fishing trip. You can usually bend the rod so everyone on the boat gets to catch some fish. After everyone has caught a few fish, I like to hit the shipwrecks. It’s a good spot to catch snapper and grouper for those folks looking to fill their freezers, and a good spot to drop a big live bait for those folks looking to catch big game fish like amberjack and barracuda. For a half day fishing trip, its a great way to come in with a good bunch of fish.
If we’ve got a longer trip, like a 6 or an hour charter, I usually love to stick my nose offshore and see if we can get lucky with dolphin and wahoo. We’ve been very successful on a few trips this month by finding some big boards floating offshore. The wahoos and dolphins are usually stacked up on it and you can catch a ton of great eating fish. You really need some time to look around offshore if you want to be successful with dolphin fishing.
The shallow wrecks have had some huge barracuda around them this month. It’s a blast to take a 12 lb. spinning rod and hook into a 45″ barracuda. They make some hellatious jumps and fast runs. We usually use some 1-2 lb baby tunas for live bait and put them on the downrigger, about 15 feet off the ocean bottom. Drag the downrigger right over the top of the shipwreck and chances are good of hooking into a big barracuda, amberjack or even a rare grouper.
This picture is of a giant golden tilefish that we caught when we made some electric reel deep drops in 900′ of water. We caught this 14 pound tilefish and about 30 of these little 1-2 pound, yellow-eyed, red grouper fish that I’ve never caught before. There are some strange fish in that depth of water.
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