March 17, 2013

Warren and his family joined Justin and I on the Lady Pamela II today for a beautiful Sunday fishing trip. During the 6 hour charter we trolled the reef edge with baits rigged on both planers and on the surface. Our first catch was a 40 lb Almaco jack that put up a pretty good fight. These fish, that can get over 100 lbs., and look somewhat similar to amberjacks, but have a deeper body. We see them off Ft. Lauderdale infrequently as they generally occur further offshore from the reef areas that we troll. Warren and his crew also boated a 30 lb kingfish and a 10 lb blackfin tuna during the trip. We also had a 10 lb black grouper shot from the bottom to grab one of the trolled baits, which was a big surprise. This was a keeper-sized black but unfortunately we had to let it because the season is currently closed for this species. Nice to have you aboard Warren!

March 16, 2013

Today Captain Darin and I were out together on the Lady Pamela II, the first really good weather day we’ve had this week. We were zig-zagging off the outer reef edge trolling out to about 250 feet of water then back in again. We boated a nice 30 lb wahoo, and a few mahi-mahi up to 12 lbs. The trolling action eventually seemed to slack off so we moved into deeper water to try for tilefish. Our anglers had boated a couple of fat tiles weighing 5 lbs. when all of a sudden a huge school of mahi-mahi swam up to the boat!

It was a re-rigging frenzy as we hustled to get baits in the water. These fish were all over ten lbs. and try as we might, we could not get these fish to eat. Cut baits, ballyhoo, feathers, jigs, everything in the tackle box, but nothing we threw could get them to bite. We already had a nice box of fish, but a couple of those ten pounders would have been a welcome addition. It is not often when you have to leave the fish looking!