A variety of species continues to be the trend with the fishing off Miami Beach. Thursday was the best day wind wise and that was the day that we fished.
Thursday (12/7) was a full day with Tom Mathias and Ange Sireno. The herring at Government were solid like they have been for a period of time. We filled the livewell and headed straight out. The wind varied during the course of the day coming from N/E @ 2 - 8 knots giving us very calm seas. Fishing started off slow with the first fish being a remora on the downrigger. Inside of 100 feet we caught and released two kingfish. Next, we slow trolled baits out to 225 feet with no action.
The little bit of current that we had first thing died off completely and with light wind, the drift was very slow. We saw a dolphin jump on a slick that was offshore of us and pulled in our lines to run out and south of the area. We slow trolled two flatlines and within a couple of minutes we had a nice size dolphin on. It made a couple of jumps and ran off some line before giving us our hook back. We saw another dolphin jump inshore of our location and ran south of it again. This time we didn't get the fish to find our bait. We needed to make a major move. While running north, we saw several good slicks out in 450 feet and worked them. The only thing we saw was very small tuna popping the surface. It was time to slow troll in shallower to try and get some action going with kingfish. At 220 feet we caught and released a small brown shark that had another hook and wire leader hanging from its jaw. At 150 feet, the downrigger produced a dolphin. At 110 feet it was a kingfish on the downrigger that we added to the fishbox. The downrigger saw more action at 130 feet and this time it was a sailfish.
While reviving the sailfish and taking pictures, a dolphin swam up to the sailfish and followed it. The herring we presented was eaten immediately by the dolphin and then another showed up and was hooked and yet another ate a bait. The fourth fish got the bait but avoided the hook. The wind had picked up just a bit and setting up a drift, got us another dolphin on a flatline. More slow trolling produced yet another kingfish on the downrigger. To sum it up, what started as a slow day got better as soon as a little wind started blowing. The downrigger produced the vast majority of our action that came in the 85 - 220 foot range. We had at least a half dozen hits from toothy critters that resulted in cut mono leaders or baits slashed. Final count was 1 sailfish on the downrigger, 5 dolphin, 4 kingfish, 1 shark, and 1 remora.
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Captain Dave Kostyo Knot Nancy Fishing Charters 305 620-5896 Charter 305 965-9454 Cell www.knotnancy.com nkostyo@bellsouth.net