This past week has been a prime example of how the weather can change the bite on fishing. Cooler temperatures, windier conditions, rain and a mixture of clouds and sun helped steer an influx of bait offshore and in the backcountry. Bonefish are starting to school on the oceanside flats with some lunker bones, in search of crabs to eat, tailing on the downtown flats. Spanish mackerel are still eating heartily on the reef and in the Gulf of Mexico. A mixed bag of fish are being caught around Flamingo. Snook redfish, ladyfish and even some flounder are eating gulp shrimp on jigs and live shrimp.
Now that a few fronts have pushed through and lowered water temperatures into the low- to mid-seventies, it's time to troll the reef in search of sailfish. I fished in the first annual Bay Boat Billfish Tournament Series that kicked off at Ma's Fish Camp restaurant in Islamorada. It's the first of a series of three sailfish tournaments, in which participants can have up to 3 anglers and 4 rods fishing out of a boat of 24 feet or under.
Nine boats met at Smugglers Cove Marina near the Snake Creek Bridge for the shotgun start out to the reef. I took my 22-foot Pathfinder out to a nearby patch reef to get the essential bait we would need for the day. In this case, it was ballyhoo and cigar minnows. These baits are fragile and it's important to keep them as frisky as possible for a picky sailfish. To catch the ballyhoo, we dropped a block of chum in a bag over the side and used small hair hooks tipped with tiny bits of shrimp. We were careful to handle the baits minimally by using a de-hooker. Sunblock in the baitwell is no good either, so we kept our hands out of there and used a dip net to retrieve the bait for rigging.
Once we got to the reef, the bite was already on. Within minutes of putting our baits out using 7/0 in-line circle hooks, we saw other boats were hooking up with sailfish, barracuda and tuna. Not long after, we were hooked up with our first bent rod, but were disappointed to see that it was a kingfish instead of a point-scoring sailfish. We stuck with our strategy of working one area in close to the reef, then moving slightly further out as the tide fell, but the sailfish bite tapered by mid-morning. At one point we had several sails come into our spread but no eaters despite all of our best efforts. Our efforts were rewarded later in the day when we finally hooked up with a nice sailfish. After a short battle using only twelve-pound test, we had the fish along boat-side for the required photograph of the leader touch and release.
A total of sixteen sails were caught and released with eight of the nine teams catching at least one sailfish and four boats releasing 3 sailfish. Congratulations to Capt. George Clark Jr. and his crew on winning this great new event. If you are interested in fishing the next Bay Boat Billfish Tournament on January 20, or for more information please contact Capt. Jim Dalrymple at 305-304-9386.
