The cold is gone, wow that was horrible! Fish floating and lots of bait dying off.
The fishing has been getting better as the week went on! The beginning of the week was hard going. The kings have been chewing their faces off and the rest of the Ocean was slow. However as we approached the end of the week not only did the weather improve so did the fishing.
The bait became much more catchable and the fish thawed out and boy they were hungry! The kings are still biting and we are looking forward to some real good Smoker King fishing, fish over 30lbs!! The Sailfish even started to bite. My buddy BC caught 17 on Saturday. Both the 50' Evans and the 46' Whiticar caught a handful over the weekend, was fun fishing. We even started to anchor down again on the reef edge to see if the dinner fish were going to eat. They did and it got really good too!!
The Yellowtails and Mutton snappers decided to bite very well. The Tails ranged about 2 to 3 pounds and the Muttons have varied from 8 to 18 pounds, real nice fishing!! The outlook this week is very good, we should start to see some Wahoo’s this week and the rest of the fishery should pick up big time. Can’t wait for the excitement of the upcoming weeks.
We will be fishing the Cheeca Sailfish tournament this weekend so hopefully we will have some great shots of some Sail dogs!!!! Also the Cobia have made an early showing with all the cold water in the backcountry the Cob’s have had to move back out front and they pushed out with a vengeance. It’s a little tough to get them to bite, however with a little patience you are able to trick one or two into eating.
Well that’s it for now. Stay tuned for an exciting week!! Thanks!
Been a lot of guys asking about the sailfish bite... conditions are pretty good. not red hot, but certainly good and consistent for a change. We've released 3 so far this morning on the Pretty Work, and yesterday Joe caught 7 out of Lauderdale, running south, fishing off Miami. We are fishing a lot right now, both tournaments and fun fishing...from Key West right on up to Lauderale/Boca area. if anyone needs a fresh report, just drop a line...
Check out Capt. John's update on today's action! We have one of our boats entered (PRETTY WORK), and they are sitting there tied with a bunch of other boats with 4 fish. Leader has 13, and second is 5....Pretty good action considering the SW wind we had today..not exactly ideal conditions.
No, not the dog barking, but the wind howling here this morning. What a difference a day makes. Both boats just got in after calling it a half day. Fishing sounded ok, but it was one of those "hold on tight days". One boat got into the dolphin pretty good the other anchored down and caught their limit of nice Yellowtail and some kings. Off a couple days and will report back later this week,
Tight Lines,
Trey
Last edited by Over Under; 01-24-2010 at 02:51 PM.
Great Weather brings Awesome Fishing - Islamorada Weekly Recap
The warm weather is back!! Islamorada was full of sunny days and calm seas. The week started off with a bit of a slow period as the fish were trying to get themselves acclimated to waters again.
Starting Wednesday things began to perk up quite a bit. The bait was plentiful and pretty easy to catch. We had ballyhoos and cigar minnows as well as some sardines.
We started out testing some of the deeper fades only to find the Mackerels and a few Sailfish. The bite was tough but yet productive, just took about 10 to 15 minutes in between. The Mack’s had pushed down to the bottom, probably because the water was dirty. So we need to use our bottom rod which produced most of the bites and some nosed hooked minnows found their way to some Sails.
The reef was on fire; we anchored down in 60’ of water on Thursday and found ourselves in the midst of a great Grouper bite. We came tight, put in the chum and started flinging some sand and oats, hit the bottom with a sardine and instantly caught a nice 18lb Gag Grouper! After we released him we caught several more real nice Grouper’s, a couple of Blacks another Gag and even a few nice Reds which all got released alive and well! Meanwhile the Yellowtail bite was ok, with all those Groupers under them they were being…. Mmmm….a little shy, LOL.
Friday and Saturday was spent fishing the Cheeca Sailfish Tournament. Capt. Clyde was running the 46’ Pretty Work and they had pretty good success. They winded up in about 7th place with 5 fish. The weather was almost too nice over the weekend which made for ok fishing. On the 50’ That’s Right we did our own little 4 boat Tournament with some great guys, Disabled Vets. We had two days of fair fishing, the guys caught some Kings one about 25lbs and some Yellowtails for dinner, we also found a Sailfish wandering in the shallow sand. Andrew pitched him a cigar minnow and he wolfed it down!
Sunday was another story as the winds came on and it was nice and rough for us. We did manage to catch our bait and went right out to the 89 fade only to find current into the wind and not much fun to try and fish. We managed several bites down deep but found ourselves a little uncomfortable, so we went inside and grabbed a poly ball by the Eagle wreck. Wow we scored, flag Yellowtails every one of them 4 to 6lbs, super action on 12lb spinners! Group of nice guys from NJ, they had their hands full to say the least. We also found some Kings and several Ceros while sitting on the wreck!
Not much going on for us down here this week, however I hope to see some of you up in Delaware this weekend for the Saltwater Sportsman Seminar!
Captain John Oughton reports an awesome sailfish bite going on in Islamorada over the last few days. Winds today bring a challenge. Check out his audio report here!
Capt. Joe McGivern was fishing up above me yesterday off Ocean Reef, in teh Mayors Cup. He was 8-13, while I was down off Tavernier and had about the same number of shots, although we didn't connect as often as we'd have liked!
Capt. Jeff and I loaded up the Mirage Center Console and headed out for the day, with a Mother-Son team from Texas looking to catch Rhodes (the son) his first sailfish. Conditions had been pretty good the last few days, so we were feeling pretty good about dedicating the day to live-baiting sailfish. By the time we arrived at the bait patch, there were quite few boats sitting there, none of which appeared to be doing too much...uh oh...not a good sign. But things went our way, and as soon as we came tight on the anchor, we had the ballyhoo up close and personal. Two throws of the cast net and we had plenty for the day and we were off to the reef. I decided to run a bit to the north and hit some of my favorite Sailfish spots. We put the lines in right off of Davis Reef, with only a couple other boats around us to start the day. The conditions were bit sloppy, with a steady 18 knots wind out of the SE, but the 29 Mirage handled it quite well. The single diesel allowed us simply to keep the boat in gear, idling upsea, with the baits swimming perfectly. I didn't see the first bite, just saw Jeff pick up rod, wind and come tight. After a few seconds, it was clear that we had hooked our targeted species! We made quick work of the fish, chasing him down and putting the baits back in. It was probably only another 10 minutes and we had several fish up in the spread. We hooked one of several that showed themselves and again made pretty quick work of the cooperative fish and got a nice picture for the photo albums. As the morning went on, more boats arrived, and we continued to get shots at fish until about 1:00pm when it slowed down to a trickle. By this time, there were probably 30 boats around us. We saw many fish caught yesterday, with several doubles and triples, quite exciting all day. We ended up releasing 3, and probably had 9-12 shots, who knows. It was pretty active and our anglers enjoyed their first ever chance at hooking a sailfish with live bait!. We pulled the hooks on a few, that we'd have loved to have gotten, but that's how it goes. Towards the later part of the day, we got into some Kings. Most bit us off, since we were running all mono for the sails, but we got couple of them. We never moved more than a quarter mile all day, simply did circles around the area that seemed to keep producing bites for everyone. The action was from about 125 to 150 feet. We had a few bites in real close on the flat lines, that was really cool for everyone to see, as the Sails chased the ballyhoo almost right up to the transom!
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