Been a while since I posted but we have been real busy this month...especially with our trip to the bahamas last week. Swordfishing for us has been up and down but we have still consistently been catch 1-3 fish/night for the past month. Fishing much deeper than usual due to the heavy shark migration has been paying off up until this week. Our first trip this month was the ben green charter from Northstar Seafood in Pampano beach, FL. Ben and his group experienced a great night of fishing catching 3 out of 6 fish hooked including a 57, 66, and a 77" fish all but the biggest being released! Length and girth put the biggest fish right around 230lbs.
Our latest report on 7/25 with Les and his group from Chicago consited of our slowest night and a long time. Only having 2 slashed baits, missing one fish and landing a smallish 51" fish that was released.
Consistenly for the last two months we have been hooking sharks and occassionally having them chew through the leader. Most are varieties of brown sharks but we have been getting bit off by makos as well. Some of them we have known to be makos because they have jumped and others because of the way the mono has that long curly burr hanging off the end...Finally in the second week of july after boating two swordfish in the 100lb range we hooked and brought a nice mako to the boat, just out of range we had a fish in the 300+ lb range tailing off the stern when he chewed through the leader and won the battle. The next night with a charter from New Jersey we also boated 2 more swords and around 2:30AM our tip rod started screaming and the the fish sprinted towards the boat. As he came in the lights it was another mako this time I got the poon in hand and planted it right through the gills just as the fish chewed through the leader. This is when the fight really began. Over the next 1.5 hours we fought the mako on the harpoon line and finallly got the fish secured, it measured 84" lower jaw to fork length.
We also had a charter trip to the bahamas. Picking up our customers in Nassau fishing around the island was very slow to say the least with the first day of fishing producing only a few skipjack. On the second day we took a long run down to fish the bouy off Fresh creek in Andros. THe tuna were still there and in the afternoon the sarted to feed, being unsuccessful on the troll we quickly swiched over and started chunking with our skipjacks. The fish were very line shy which required light leaders and small hooks. Our first two baits in the water were immediately picked up by two smallish 20-25lb YFT. Our next two broke off but appreared to be nice fish...the actioned continued for the next 2 hours and our final tally was 4/10 on fish to 40lbs. We visually saw fish in the 80lb range, and our sounder screen never stopped with tuna consistenly being marked!
Here are some pictures form July...
Capt. Justin Nighan
Liquid Gold Charters
www.liquidgoldcharters.com
1.JPG)
1.JPG)