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 ESPN Seminar!