This last week has proven to be an interesting one – I did a lot of different stuff with a lot of different results. Before I chronicle a couple of days – let me give some general observations and give a couple bits of news.
1)I now accept credit cards – WaterDog Guide Service has decided to leave the stone age for both your convenience and my piece of mind.
2)I have had two cancellations this week and have several open days – the weather looks good and i need some “sponsors” to go fishin’ – flounder, spanish, big sharks, kings, mahi – it’s up to you.
Nearshore – The flounder bite continues to be good but just like the mid-summer bite, one day can be red hot and the next so-so. We’ve been doing very well though using both mullet (the marshes are now full of perfect-sized mullet – look along the edges of the grass in the deeper channels) and mud-minnows as bait. There are a ton of short fish this year (lots of summers) and my diver friends are still reporting lots of fishing in the 5-15 mile range wrecks…so there are still a lot of fishing moving nearshore. In years past, when we started seeing less and less fish on the deeper wrecks, the nearshore wrecks get red hot. With a little patience, some time and some skill we can easily put 10-15 keepers in the boat during a 4-6 hour day.
There are also a lot spanish finally around – there are tons of the smaller fish in 20-40 foot of water off the ebach (from the sportsman to the sheraton piers) and the larger fish are around but just spotty – we have had mixed luck kiting and live-baiting for them. Should get better with every passing day.
There are also still lots of giant sharks in the inside waters – my buddy captain scott and i went the other day and in 3 hours hooked 5 monsters. The only problem is that they were all black-tip spinners over 80lbs. They all tail-walked and cork-screwed and tore up my tackle. Awesome site though!
Offshore – There is currently a great king mackerel bite in the 10-15 mile range. I just haven’t had anyone who has wanted to go!!! In normal years I usually am slaying them on the beach by this time of year but the bait just hasn’t moved in yet – i was attributing it to the nasty water but the water has now cleared nicely. While a few nioce big kings have been caught nearshore recently, the numbers just haven’t arrived yet – but with this consistant SW wind, it’s only a matter of days.
The mahi bite continues to be red hot – if we have the weather, you can catch as many as you care to…it’s simply incredible. I’ve also been running into a lot of wahoo lately…and its only time before i finally raise a sail this summer as during hte last two weeks the offshore billfish bite is as good as its ever been. The sportfishers have ben flying so many release flags lately that i thought they were preparing for a parade!!!
7/27 – Fished with Perry and MAtt today and they wanted to get some mahi on light tackle. We started off looking for fishing trolling with ballyhoo and in less than 2 minutes had a screwer off a flat line. Twenty minutes lately – 20lb+ wahoo in 80 foot of water. Sweet!!!!!
After that we found the dolphin under big patches of grass – on the troll I had groups of 5-10 fish smashing my spread at high speed. We could have SLAYED them ut we were after quality of fight and just aobut all our fish were caught casting small jigs to weed patches. We had a lot of LDRs and released several at the boat – awesome stuff guys!!!
7/22-7/25 – I spent most of my days poundin’ the flounder on the nearshore wrecks. We had a few big spanish around and a lot of sharks – tons of fun on the light tackle. I had a problem leaving my camera at home and letting its batteries die- so i dont have a lot of pics but here are just a few happy groups of people.
