December 20, 2011
Today we had an all day eight hour swordfishing trip. The seas were running 4-6 feet so we had to troll on the way to the swordfishing grounds. For the first two plus hours we never got a bite, and Eric and his father were looking disappointed, but we were sure we were going to catch them some fish. At about 5 hours into the trip, and about 11 miles offshore, we found a piece of bamboo floating in the water, and it was alive. Every few years you find a tree or other floating debris, and it has fish all over it. Today was that day and it was on fire! As we made pout first pass, the wahoo were jumping all over the surface, and bit off all of our rigs. Darin quickly re-rigged with wire leaders and we made another pass. We were catching wahoo and mahi-mahi left and right. It was amazing! We caught a 35lb mahi-mahi and a few 25lb wahoo. We ended up catching 8 wahoo and 8 mahi-mahi in 20 minutes beneath that one piece of bamboo. We eventually made it to the swordfish grounds and made our first drop in 1700 feet of water, with no bites. By this time our charter had enough of the rough seas and we called it a day. Why not, we had already landed an incredible sixteen big fish! Way to go Eric!
December 23, 2011
Our client Arthur had booked a fishing trip with us last June, but with a death in his family, he had to cancel. He paid for the trip and said he would come back. Well, Arthur called the other day and was ready to go fishing in the afternoon. We started the trip out by catching some bullet bonitos, as Arthur wanted to catch his own live baits. Amazingly, as we were catching the bonitos, a sailfish swam up and tried to eat one of the baits! Mate Pauli, the fastest guy you have ever seen, hooked a live bonito on a spinning rod and quickly cast it out. We hooked up the sailfish and it was off to the races. The fish dumped a lot of line, so I started backing down fast. Unfortunately, there was another boat trolling nearby and snagged our line, cutting the sailfish off. Pauli was fit to be tied, but there was nothing we could do. We went back to catching the rest of our baits and set up our spread. Around 2 hours into the trip we caught a 40lb kingfish, one of the biggest ones I have ever caught. It was a monster, and if we had been tournament fishing, it could have been a winner! We rounded out the trip by hooking up a monster sailfish that we got all the way to the boat. I sure was glad to see that our earlier sailfishing misfortune hadn’t jinxed us for the whole trip!
Tight Lines,
Capt David Ide
954 761 8045
