During the past week, we've seen action with dolphin, wahoo, kingfish, and tarpon. For the vast majority of the week, there has been very little to a light south current. On our Friday offshore trip we even found a green water pocket 13 miles SE of Haulover Inlet.
Tuesday (5/2) we had blue water with just a touch of south current. The wind varied from NNW - NE @ 11 - 15 knots. Adam Anderson along with his friends Mike and Shaun were down from Detroit for Adam's bachelor party and planned a day of fishing before the actual party. Bait fishing started out tough at the bent range marker and finished very strong inside of Government Cut where we found lots of pilchards. We ran down to the hotels on Key Biscayne where we fished in the 90 - 160 foot range. All of our action came inside of 140 feet in the form of large bonito on the flatlines, a dolphin on the kite, and kingfish on the downrigger. We also got several chopped baits and cut off leaders. When the action slowed, we ran out to 470 feet and got our reward in the form of a 25 pound dolphin in 400 feet. We finished the day off the monument buoy with more bonito action.
Wednesday (5/3) evening, it was tarpon at Government Cut. The action started slow, however, it got fast and furious in a hurry. The first fish weighed in at about 90 pounds. The next drift it was a 50 pound fish. On the third drift, we literally had a tiger by the tail. Whoever said that you don't foul hook fish with circle hooks is dead wrong. The third fish started off by dumping the vast majority of line from the reel. Jim Lefevre kept telling me that something didn't feel right with the fish and it seemed like the leader was wrapped around the fish's body. The rod tip was bouncing up and down as if we had a jack crevalle, but we'd seen the fish make several jumps and knew it was a tarpon. After about 20 minutes, we got our answer when we saw that we were pulling the fish in backwards because it was hooked in a meaty part of the tail. We released the fish and I straightened the circle hook out in the process when pulling on the leader. The fourth fish of the evening was another 50 pound fish. We had two more fish on, but each fish managed to throw the hook on the second and third jumps respectively. That gave of a 4 for 6 total for the evening using live crabs.
Friday (5/5) Adam Anderson was back for more action. This time he had Chad, Tony, and Jeff with him. They had seen the pictures of the big dolphin that Adam had caught on Tuesday and wanted to go dolphin fishing. We started by catching a good supply of pilchards in Haulover Inlet. Running SE from Haulover, we found a large piece of cargo netting in 740 feet. By dropping a 4 ounce jig down deep, we brought a school of dolphin to the surface. They were a bit finicky with their feeding at first, however, we managed to get one to eat a 1/4 ounce Kaplan jig and then the others followed up by eating the live baits. Everyone was hooked up at the same time. We made several trips back to the cargo netting and each time we caught a few more fish. Some were under the 20" legal size and got thrown back. We caught 18 fish and kept 12. I then dropped the jig back down deep and we caught a 12 pound wahoo. Another drop brought more dolphin to the surface. Yet another drop produced a 10 pound wahoo. The next drop had a fish hitting the jig but did not hook up. The final two drops by the cargo netting produced no action, so we moved on. At 13 miles out, we found a heavy scattered weed line that gave us one more throw back dolphin. Moving out a bit further we ran into a large pocket of green water. We ran back in to the blue water and toward the north. We made several drops with the jig at a plastic deck chair we found floating. Our efforts produced no strikes. We called it a day and when we were coming back across the Bay toward the Keystone canal, we found a large school of big jack crevalles busting schools of mullet. We caught and released 3 of them with our pilchards to finish the trip.
Captain Dave Kostyo
Knot Nancy Fishing Charters
305 620-5896 Charter
305 965-9454 Cell
www.knotnancy.com
nkostyo@bellsouth.net