The fishing remains good with some dolphin offshore and some sailfish, kingfish, blackfin tunas and bonitas on the edge. The dolphin have been on the small size and some schools are made up of small schoolies less than the minimum size which is 20 inches. If you do find a school with these smaller fish, it is probably best to leave them alone as dolphin grow very fast and these fish will be a few pounds or better very quickly.
If the conditions on the edge are good, there have been some kingfish, blackfin tunas, bonitas and a few sailfish around. I fished the Miami Dolphins Tournament and we had ex-Miami Dolphin, OJ McDuffie on board, as well as my charter from Steel Fab and Stiles Construction. We ended up either in 4th or 5th place with 3 nice blackfin tunas, and 6 kingfish (only one made weight though). OJ McDuffie also caught his first sailfish that day and although it wasn't in the species of fish that counted, we had a blast catching and releasing OJ's first sailfish.
The swordfish bite has started to pick up as well. I haven't taken any swordfish trips since it has been so slow, but a few fish are being caught at night as well as during the day. I have a few daytime and a few evening trips planned for this month so it is good news that bite may be picking back up. It is also good news since I just added another weapon to our arsenal of tackle. I now have the new Daiwa MP3000 manual/electric reel. In my opinion, if you want to tackle these broadbills during the day and you want to do it with a conventional reel and not an electric reel, this is the perfect choice. You can drop your bait to the bottom and if you get a strike, you can fight that fish in a harness and crank it up by hand. On the other hand, if you don't get a bite and you need to check your bait, or if you just missed a bite and need to re-bait, then you can use the electric portion of the reel to wind the heavy lead and all that line back up to the surface. The reel was a bit pricey, but I hope that it will give us years of good service and catch our customers plenty of big fish. I am now offering another service for my clients. In the past I have worked with Mark at Baitmasters to have swordfish that my clients have caught, processed by Baitmasters (steaked, vacuum sealed, and frozen) and shipped back to the client's home. This was always done as a semi custom order, but now I have pricing from Baitmasters and can offer this as a regular service to clients who wish to have there fish processed and sent back home instead of dealing with bringing coolers on airplanes and avoiding that entire hassle.
I am schedule to go back to the Bahamas twice this month and will be there for the rest of this month. I don't have any open days left in June, but have plenty of dates open in July. So if you are looking to tackle a broadbill at night or day, or maybe catch some dolphin or tunas and kings, July is right around the corner so give me a call and let's set it up
Tight Lines,
Capt. Dean Panos
