Aug 8th, 2008
This has been a great start for August. On the edge, from 200 to 100 foot of water, there have been a lot of kingfish and bonitas, as well as a few sailfish. The kings have been average in size from 6 to 15 pounds with some 20 and 30 pounders thrown in. Both the guys trolling and the live bait anglers have been catching them. We have caught our limit on every trip that we stayed and fished the edge. The schools of bonitas are swarming. Although bonita are not good table fare, they are great fish to fight and learn how to improve your light tackle skills. Bontas on 12 pound test and lower are a worthy adversary. Besides the bonitas and kings, there have also been a few sailfish around. We caught one out of a double the other day and heard of at least a few boats catching one or two sails that day as well. Offshore there have been some dolphin, but it has slowed down just a bit compared to last month. The dolphin we have found are now those bigger schoolies that you definitely don't have to measure and a quite a few are "gaffers: as well. We also got lucky and caught a few wahoo these past few trips, The wahoo have been under debris, but a few guys are also catching wahoo n the deeper side of the edge. Typically the full moon in August can produce a great wahoo bite on the edge, especially early in the morning.
I haven't done any night swordfishing, but we did a couple of daytime trips this past week. The current has been going very hard which makes it hard to drop a bait to the bottom, but somehow we have managed to hit bottom and hold and were rewarded with a swordfish on both trips. The first trip we had some local guys that wanted to hone in on their daytime tactics. The day started tough with some tackle issues, but after we sorted it out we ended up catching a 150 pound swordfish. Our next daytime trip, I had some very good clients from up north that have fished with me for years. They have caught swordfish at night with me, but wanted to try the daytime swording this time. The current was just as strong, but on our first drop we caught 74" (LJFL) swordfish that weighed 238 pounds on the scale at Keystone. The rest of the day we had two more fish on, but ended up pulling the hooks on both of them. We also had a few other bites as well. I am fishing with the same guys tomorrow so hopefully we can catch them another swordfish for them to take back home.
Based upon last year, these next three months will be great months for catching swordfish, both during the day and at night. Once the current slows down a bit, I think the daytime swording is going to take off. I have a few trips booked for Sept and a few for October, but definitely give me a call if you want to tackle with the mighty broadbill. For the guys wanting to fish manually for the daytime swords, we have the new Daiwa MP3000 which allows you to fight the fish with the handle and if you don't get a bite or miss the bite, you can switch to the electric portion of the reel to bring up all that line and lead. It is probably the ultimate reel for daytime swordfishing in South Florida.
Tight Lines,
Capt. Dean Panos
