Capt. Mike's 4/25-28 report

[Capt. Mike Ellis]

It has been awhile since my last post. But the days never seem to have enough hours in them to get everything done. My day trips have been a mixture of tuna and snapper fishing. The yellowfin have been in the 40 to low 80-pound range. And have been taken all on very small live baits and light line. Which makes the fight time a little longer. I had one customer Waquass Q. fight a yellowfin in the 140 to 150 pound class for over two hours only to have the forty-pound line give out. This was a heartbreaker but with four other yellows in the box it made it easier to take. We decided to switch gears and head inshore to try and catch us a wahoo, but we were to be denied our wahoo. And once more we switched gears and went even farther inshore to do some mangrove snapper fishing. The snapper where waiting with open mouths, and the first mangrove of the day was taken before the first piece of chum was even thrown in. From that point forward it was on as mangrove after mangrove was tossed in the boat. When the smoke cleared we had 23 mangroves in the boat from 3-12 pounds and four very tired anglers. So with an hour or so of fish cleaning ahead of me we headed for the barn. We had a good day of fishing.

Then, I had a good buddy, Jon Tucker and his wife Sydia come in town to visit us for the weekend and do a little fun fishing. We had a window on Thursday and since the mangroves were starving I decided to go and help a few of them out of their predicament. Being from south Florida and having fished for snook as their primary quarry, Jon and Sydia made short work out of the mangroves. In about two hours we had 14 mangroves from 3-11 pounds in the boat. Along with about a half a dozen extra large jack crevelles and a handful of redfish that had to be released.

The next day it was Jon, Eddie Burger and I. Since we were out for fun, we decided to do some scouting. The bait was a little harder to make than it has been the last several trips but we secured enough for the day. With the seas already on the sporty side and predicted to get bigger we decided to fish nearby. We made it to the rig and nothing was happening at first, then a few fish came up and a we had a double hookup: a yellowfin in the 30 pound range and a big skipjack. Then a cast from the bow from Eddie and we had a real nice yellow eat a Frenzy popper only to have the fish almost spool us and then come unhooked. The fish after that would come up sporadically and one more yellowfin in the forty-pound range found it’s way into the boat. Since this was a fun trip we decided to try for a wahoo on the way in. It wasn’t a success but it wasn’t a bomb out either. We caught a quarter of a wahoo as the rest of it was eaten for lunch on the way up. We had one other wahoo smoke out a bunch of line only to come unbuttoned. Time to head for the barn, clean up and get up the road to go to Jazzfest on Saturday. I still have a couple days open in May and some in June. The fishing is really strating to take off

Capt. Mike