Almaco Jacks are Biting on the Wrecks!

Monster almaco jack

Monster almaco jack caught by 11 year old Joey from Long Island, NY

Today we had out John from Long Island, NY along with his son, Joey.  The ocean looked good that day so we went right out to 150ft of water and set the kites, looking to catch a sailfish or big dolphin, whatever would bite.  No bites at all kite fishing, so after an hour, we switched tactics and trolled north to do some wreck fishing.  Trolling was not much better.  We didn’t get a single bite on the way up to our spot, but as we were clearing our spread and winding in the baits to switch up to our wreck fishing technique, a sailfish came up and ate out long left planer bait.  Just as we had wound the planer to the tip of the rod, the sailfish showed his dorsal fin behind the bait.  He grabbed it once and let go, and stayed behind it and hit it another 5 or 6 times before fading away.

We were at our wreck, the spot we wanted to fish.  On our first drop, we dropped down a live pinfish on a Penn International 50 strung with braid.  As soon as it hit the bottom, the line came tight and the fish was on!  Joey jumped in the chair with the fish and started the fight.  An 11 year old vs. a giant almaco jack is a good fight! We got the fish to the boat in just under 25 minutes.  Both he and the fish were dead tired.  It was a monster almaco jack, estimated 40 pounder.  Almacos average just 5-10 pounds so we did not expect him to catch one so large.  Excellent job young fisherman. We made another with a pinfish and got an immediate bite again.  Rick was in the chair this time and he caught this one much quicker.  It was another nice almaco jack, but not as large as Joey’s fish.  We were into overtime at this point, but we had to make one more drop to see if we could get another bite.  Alas, we had caught all we could off that spot today and we were late coming home. The fishing was tough but we pulled it off at the end with some nice almaco jacks.  Glad to see them biting on the wrecks.

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