Miss Judy Charters
Captain Judy Helmey
"Kicking Fish Tail Since 1956!"
124 Palmetto Drive
Savannah, Georgia 31410
912 897 4921 or 912 897 3460 fax
www.missjudycharters.com
August 27, 2007
Captain Judy's Saltwater Fishing Report
Which includes:
Inshore report, Offshore Report, Freshies Suggestions, and "Little Miss Judy's Believe It or Not!" (Story)
Artificial Reefs Offshore
More than 50 feet of water
These areas are holding "much fish attention!" You have baits almost everywhere you look from the surface to the bottom. Not only that, but your have larger fish feeding on them. If you are not familiar with which type of fish is jumping where don't be alarmed. The first thing you need to keep in mind is "they are chasing something!" With that being said, "a moving escape type of lure should work." I attack it a little differently this past week. Instead of trolling the lure through or around the surface schools of fish I just stopped the boat. Once I go in step with the school-moving pattern "a simple thing happened!" We caught fish! Here's exactly what we did:
Once it was decided "which way the fish were moving" we cast our bait offering to that area. When you are using a large boat over 30 feet sometimes the presents will cause the surface schooling bait to head for the bottom. Once the schools got use to the noise, since I don't cut my engine, things got interesting in the casting/catching department.
For bait we were using small butterfly type jigs, which were cast directly into the school. We let them drop down into the water column all the way to the bottom, and then we worked the lure sharply. (Sharply means, "short direct down pulls of the rod) We also "up staged," which means pumping the rod up. This worked the fish loved it and we caught Spanish mackerel and little tunny. The fight was great on light tackle!
The best thing to remember when working artificial lures is to think like a fish. Firstly, the lure pulled has to look like a fleeing fish or just a fish in the swimming mode. Whatever the case maybe it has to look and act like the real thing. Any movement that doesn't look like the real thing is going to scare fish away. When you work your lure you want the fish to hit it quick and your don't want them to think! So therefore when you work your lure "think like a fish!"
I have changed a few of my reels to 50 pound braided line, which has changed my hook up ratio quite a bit. I am using 50-pound test braided line to which I am attaching 25 feet of fluorocarbon leader material. The leader size varies from 50 to 60 pounds. I tried tying my lure directly to my braided line and this didn't work too well. The fish decided that they could see that stupid lure as well as what was pulling it around in the water.