2009-02-24 – Good to be back
Sure is nice to be back in the warm sunshine and good fishing. The last few days have been quite nice, temps in the high 70’s sea temps are perfect 73.5 and light winds. Capt Andrew ran the boat on Sunday and had a super trip. He started out catching his bait, cigar minnows and ballyhoo just above the Alligator Lighthouse in 15’ of water. Bait was nice and easy for a change two tosses of the 14’ and the guy’s where all set. Andrew fished up the line a little and drifted a ledge which went from 65’ to 100’ pretty sharply. The guy’s had great success with some nice black groupers and several mutton snappers. The muttons would only eat the ballyhoo and the Groupers seemed to really enjoy live grunts.
The NEW Torque rods we are field testing from Penn worked very well, super action and as light weight as I’ve ever held. The rod tip was soft and allowed all on board to see the bite, super sensitivity.
Next Andrew moved inside the reef edge and anchored down for awhile. The yellowtails and mangrove snappers were very active and hungry. Using shrimp and cut ballyhoo for bait the guy’s dug in and managed to put together a super catch of snappers. The yellowtail ranged from 2lb to 3lb’s and the mangroves 3lbs, nice fish. Next they moved back out over the edge into about 117 to 127’ of water and fished a fade. Almost right off the bat they hooked up a sailfish, after the release they started to catch 5lb to 10lb king mackerels all on cigar minnows and 20lb spinners along with the Torque rods and same result great action and very solid.
Today was pleasant had to work at it but it all came together quite well. Bait was not easy took little over an hour, minnows and ballyhoo. We then went out to 117’ of water and did real well with the mackerels had our limit in about an hour. The wind started to lay out so I thought I might take a ride down the reef line and do some snapper fishing. We had one problem the water was gin clear, the stream has moved in and the NE winds have helped push in some really nice blue water, any day now its going to bust wide open.
Anyhow snappers were happy and we caught what we needed along with a VERY large Nurse shark she was about 250lb’s and swam away happy. We picked up the anchor and moved back out to130’ of water. We found a nice weed line however it was all ell grass no life. We did however find a few real nice Black fin tunas that came in at 20lb’s real nice table fare!! The guys caught a few more makerals and some non keeper Groupers. I decided to stopF at one more patch inside on the way home and ran into an enormous school of Jacks. They where move about 7 knots or so and eating every ballyhoo in there path it was quite the sight to se hundreds of them pushing SW. We hooked two of them and wow what a battle on 20lb spinning tackle, great stuff!! Talk to again later this week.
Tight Lines,
Capt. John Oughton – Thats Right