Average Day of Catching

Now that the Holiday stuff is out of the way time for more fishing.  Mixed bag today with fewer Hogfish than I expected and zero keeper grouper.  We got one grouper that was close but no cigar.  I was planning on staying on the patches all day and picking way at the Hogfish,Porgies and Grouper but the current was a bit of a pain early in the day.  So most of the catching was done on the rock piles.  There were several mystery fish and a short Cobia, but on the whole just an average day of catching.

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

Know Yo Bait

(305) 304-8656

The new Cell Number

The European pilchard, Sardina pilchardus

While the winds are marginal, my crew in town are waiting till after Christmas for their Fishing adventure.  The weather isn't bad, but taking a day or two to spend with the family is generally good for martial relations.  So while I am doing not on the water stuff I thought I should post some pictures of bait.  The Pilchard aka Scaled Sardine, Spanish Sardine etc. etc. is a prime bait for just about anything.  The larger ones, over four inches are great offshore and the small ones are like snapper candy.  Having a live well full of these guys is serious fishing ammunition.  They can piss off the Pope though.  One day they are a no brainer to catch and the next you can waste most of your fuel for nothing.  So if you are down for a while, it is a good thing to have a bait keep in the water close so you can load up in the good times.  Some of the canals are not all that great for keeping bait especially if there is a lot of dead sea grass floating.  So you might have to locate your keep away from the dock in some sheltered spot hoping that no one wanders off with your keep.  For that reason, you will rarely see a ton of money thrown in making the bait keep to end all bait keeps. In a pinch, a garbage can with lots of holes drilled in it works fine as long as you don't over load it with bait.  Strapping a fun noodle to the top keeps it floating and a bungie will keep the lid in place.

The ballyhoo or bally, Hemiramphus brasiliensis

The ballyhoo is another great bait in the Keys alive or dead.  That is a good thing since they tend to prefer the dead state.  You can keep ballyhoo alive in a good live well for about 6 hours if you really watch them.  Just like pilchards they can be a piece of cake to catch one day and non existent the next.  Most of the time they are pretty easy to catch so that is a plus.  While waiting for them to show up in your chum slick, you can add a few menu items like snapper, porgies, hog fish etc. to the box if you pick a good spot.  

These are the two main sailfish baits for the winter season down here.  You can catch both with small hooks, size 10, a small piece of bait just about as big as the gap in the hook and a small float like for fresh water panfish will help especially for the ballyhoo.  Pilchards will also take a Sabiki rig but a cast net is the way to go for both species.

If you can throw an eight foot radius cast net you can throw a 12 footer.  Guides will normally use a 12 foot net.  For the occasional angler a 7 of 8 foot net works just fine. Size does matter but technique is important as well.   A seven foot net with an extra long lease can be just the ticket for spooky ballyhoo.  With just a little practice anyone can wing a net for bait.

pinfish, Lagodon rhomboides

Pinfish are the easiest bait to catch with hook and line or with a trap.  They are more of a challenge with a cast net than you might think, so I normally stick to hook and line.  Pinfish are not the go to bait for sailfish but I have caught a few that didn't read the rules very well.  It is better to have something than nothing, so having a few dozen in the live well is a good thing.

In addition to these basics you can have goggle eyes, threadfin herring, blue runners, small snapper, just about anything that wiggles.  I have caught sailfish on all of them.

The reason for this post is a lot of my trips are devoted more to bait catching instead of fishing.  Catching bait is a fishing basic and I am a basic kind of guy.  It makes it easier if you know what you are looking for.

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

Porgies and Hogfish

(305) 304-8656

And I actually remembered to take some pictures.

This trip was out of Bahia Honda State Park.  The yellowtail bite was off so we hit the patches and the rock piles.  Nice weather today.

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

Conch Tiki and the Phone

(305) 304-8656

Now that things have calmed down I guess it is time for the real story behind the Communications Glitch.  My old number was for Conch Tiki, a small company originally intended to sell plastic Tiki thatch for Tiki roofing so people could have good looking Tiki buildings that didn't shed old thatch in their yards or pools and didn't catch fire and burn down their neighborhood.  Well, the thatch didn't catch on because it was plastic meaning it wasn't "All Natural", wouldn't shed or catch fire and burn like bonfire like the "real thing".  

To promote the thatch that people wouldn't buy we ran radio spots and invented a fish cleaning table to use for displays.  Since I was local, I was the radio personality for the spots which generated more fishing calls than Tiki thatch or fish cleaning table calls.  The phone that was provided for the thatch calls, (305) 395-1923 ended up becoming my default fishing phone because no one would ever called my real phone anymore.

After around 10 years of not selling anything, the plug got pulled on Conch Tiki.  I talked to the service provider and I can get that number in 45 days if I like, but there was no quick any easy transition at least from my end of things.  Since the phone was for business, I got free phone service until a couple of days ago.

So the new phone number marks the end of one era and the beginning of a new one.   I had no clue what was going to happen from one day to the next in the old one and I doubt that will change, but for era accounting purposes we have a new one anyhow. So up top is my new, maybe temporary, phone number.

Now, with that out of the way.  Michele has become an Obama Care junkie with rotor cuff surgery and lots of physical therapy visits over the past couple of months and has another visit or ten scheduled while she has met her out of pocket.  After Tuesday, Colon endoscopy day, I should be back to fishing and fixing things.

My next sorta scheduled trip is Wednesday which Windfinder says should be 5-10 out of the Northeast doing classic reef fishing out of Big Pine Key.  That will be followed up by the Christmas crews so hopefully I will get some nice Grouper Snapper pictures to post up to Jan, 1st when of course grouper closes thanks to our fearless fishing leaders.

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

Communications Glitch

There is a shift in the cellphone situation.  I have a new number (305) 304-8656 so Michele doesn't get hit with my calls.  I managed to get my phone address book transferred so I will start calling or messaging with the change.

Pardon the inconvenience, but things may stay normal for a while.  I delete the previous post and revised the side bar with the new number.  Happy Holidays!

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

Cold versus Cold

Now that the first official cold front has come through and my first official cold for a bunch of years is about finished, I am back at it though with a bit of a dragging tail.  I fished for the first time in a month with a bay side, rock piles and bridge basic 101.  After the first cold front the fish start moving to their winter accommodations but if the front comes early it is hard to tell where they are in their travels.  The bay side water temperature today was around 69.5 degrees which is in the Spanish Mackerel should be around range but they haven't arrived just yet, at least not close in the bay.  The Mangroves appear to be settled into their normal winter spots and the jacks, blue runners and crevalle are fairly thick so the bay is about ready to fire off.  There is a huge difference in what is around with a pretty small difference in temperature though.  Ballyhoo  today  seemed to stick close to a very small temperature break so we had to re-anchor just to get them into the slick.  That is kind of unusual on the bay side as far as my experience goes.  That said, plan on moving a bit more North and West to find bait.

The rock piles were a bit slower than I expected.  Not a bad bite by any means just slower than usual with the porgies on the smallish side, no lanes and the ever present it seems grouper that are close to the size limit.  We had one red that was very close to legal that managed a Palm Beach release since no one was crazy about jumping into the rain to land the fish.  There were very widely scatter showers that happened to be on top of us at the time.

The bridge was a little slow but the porgies were very respectable sized mixed in with decent Mangroves and a Hogfish.  We fished the last of the outgoing tide and there wasn't a lot of bait pushing through the bridge.  Once the ballyhoo and shrimp get thicker near the bridge the action should get more serious.

For the next few days the winds should be close to ideal in the 10 to 15 knot range which will allow a few more options.  On the reef, the deeper Yellow Tail spots should produce a King Mackerel or two with shots at anything from sails to cobia.  I am thinking a longer bay side run will also produce a king or two, possible some Spanish and potentially a cobia also.  I can't really say much for sure, but it looks like the bay side bite should be more like it was before Wilma in 2005.  Wilma churned the bay up back then and really changed the bite on a lot of closer in, less than 20 miles from the house wrecks.   So if my hunch is right, there should be some serious fish back there on some not very heavily fished spots this season.  Those of you that can remember back that far know that it was pretty awesome.  Hopefully, I will have a better report in a few days,

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