Still Trying to get Offshore

The winds have been just high enough to make an offshore trip no fun unless the fish are close.  So while I watch the satellite water temperatures we have been catching dinner on the rock piles, Hogfish, porgies and yellowtail snapper mainly since the Lane Snapper have been avoiding us, and playing with Jacks, mainly Jack Crevelle with a few nice size Yellow Jacks which make good bait for bull sharks.  We released a Bull yesterday that was in the 200 to 300 pound range.  That was on the crews list of things to catch, but with rental boat time constraints we haven't played with a tarpon yet and only made a couple of drifts looking for permit.
 
The winds and full moon currents have had the bridge water churned up pretty good making sight fishing pretty hard.  I haven't seen others hooking up tarpon while we were out so I guess the bite is real early or there just isn't much of a bite.  We will give the Tarpon a more serious shot tomorrow early when we should have the cleanest water.

The winds Friday should be tolerable for the boat we have if Wind finder is right, so that is planned to be the offshore day.  That is were the SST composite comes in.

If we can hit a warm water edge less than 20 nm south of the light we should be able to find some good size dolphin without getting too beat up.  Some of the bigger boats I know have aborted due to seas the last few days and we are fishing a 26 foot Sea Chaser which while a fine boat, ain't all that comfortable in sloppy 6 foot seas.  My back is good for about two hours of pounding then I start getting a touch grumpy.

Now for a couple of pictures that suck.

Hogfish in camo.  While not as sexy as a monster dolphin, Mr. Hogfish makes a great appetizer.  Roberto turned out to be the hogfish master on the Monday trip.  He also put a couple of respectable Yellowtail in the box using the same knocker rig and shrimp.

The i phone in the picture got better photos, but you can make out some of the bull shark which seemed to make the crew's day.  It will likely grow depending on who relates the tale, but it was close to 10 foot long with 250 pounds a fairly accurate guesstimate on the weight. The low light of the day was losing a BIG mangrove that took his crew with him after getting away.  Other than that yesterday was slow in my opinion but memorable for the shark hunters.

I was supposed to be fishing today but got bumped which is just fine with me.  I need a break every couple of days to unlax from the relaxing.  Back at it tomorrow.

In the mean time, I have found some rods to replace the broken ones from this winter.  I typically use Ugly stick blanks which are almost indestructible, but the lighter graphite rods which like to break are all the rage.  I also found some dirt cheap reels which I am going to test in the coming month.  The reels are Chinese which used to be a bad thing until everyone of our "American" manufacturers started out sourcing to China.  I see no reason to pay a premium on crap when I can get the crap direct for 25% of the going rate for crap.  In fact, the crap I ordered online should last a season, then I can replace it for less than repairing the brand name crap.  These outfits though are just big enough for yellow tail and light tackle stuff, but 200 yards of 17 pound test can surprise you.

Marathon in the Florida Keys should be your next fishing vacation destination. Join us for charter fishing, fishing guide trips or our fishing 101 so you can fish on your own with better success.

 Tight lines,

 Capt. Dallas