In the past few weeks, I have done some sailfish trips, a few daytime sword trips and one night sword trip. I also had the bottom of the boat repainted for the season and have also been getting ready to fish the Sailfish Kickoff. I am fishing this tournament with my 14 year old daughter and a few friends. I am looking forward to spending some time with my daughter and hopefully catching her a few sails. Our goal is to try for the Junior Angler Trophy and who knows maybe even the Top Female Angler. We are not entered in any of the calcuttas so this is going to be a strictly fun tournament for me. All my line has been replaced and I am fully loaded with bait. The weather looks good and we should have a great bite and a great time.
The sails are definitely here and it will only get better. Most of the trips we have been averaging 2 to 5 sailfish a day and our best day was 9 sailfish. Besides sailfish there have been some dolphin on the edge as well as some kingfish. This is also the time of year we see a stray yellowfin or two. Last year there were not a lot of yellowfins caught, but it was pretty good the year before that. Tackling a big yellowfin on 20 pound sailfish tackle is a fun, you have to be patient and use the tackle to its max.
I have also done some daytime swordfishing and we have caught at least one swordfish on every trip. We haven't caught any huge fish (except for a 450 pound thresher shark which we released) but one of the swords we caught was the most "pumpkin" swordfish I have ever seen. A pumpkin sword is a swordfish that has bright orange colored meat. Some say it is due to the fact that these swords eat more crustaceans (red royal shrimp), but I have not seen this correlation very often. Anyway the meat was extremely orange and tasted very good. I also did one night sword trip. The night bite was actually red hot for a while, but the night we fished, a front was rolling through and the wind picked up and for whatever reason the bite shut off. We had one swordfish follow up a bait and take some half hearted whacks at the bait, but we never got tight. It was a long night and a rough ride back home.
The holidays are coming quick and I still have some days and nights open for the holiday week. If you are coming to town or have relatives visiting and you want to take them fishing, give me a call so we can set up the trip. The cold fronts that keep coming are getting the sails fired up. It should be a great month to fish. Also if you still haven't decided on a gift for that special someone in your life, I offer gift certificates for every type of fishing that I do. It's a great gift and one that will certainly be appreciated.
I hope everyone has a great and safe holiday season.
Tight Lines,
Capt. Dean Panos
www.doubledcharters.com
(954)805-8231