Good bottom fishing

Report Date: February 1, 2014

I started out the year fishing with Michael and his sons, who were visiting from Russia. They requested an afternoon half day, so our plan was to target golden tilefish and later try for some snappers and grunts for the kids. We left the dock at 2 p.m. and began our adventure in hopes of catching some fish for the dinner table. After waiting an hour with no tile fish bites our plan failed so we decided to try some deeper water for black belly rose fish. We pushed out to 900 ft. and as soon as the squid hit the bottom it was instant bites. Within the hour we had 20 rose fish in the boat and began our trek back into the shallows to find some action for the kids. It was getting dark so I decided to throw anchor on the 40ft. ledge of the Newport pier. Moment’s later the boys started catching fish one after another. Between goggle eyes, blue runners, yellow tail snappers, and French grunts the boys were having fun with plenty of rod bending action. Always nice to see the next generation getting involved in fishing.

  A few days later, we had some terrible weather, with winds up to thirty miles per hour. I had some offshore trips scheduled but instead we fished Biscayne bay. There have been some big schools of pilchards around so we decided to fish next to the schools in hopes to catch their predators. We broke out the 6 and 8 lb test rods and had a blast catching Spanish mackerel and jack crevelles. We managed to make a good day out of crummy weather catching 15 Spanish mackerel and a hand full of jacks.

I ended up the month fishing with Chris Kelley from Georgia who made the venture to South Florida to put in a full day. He wanted to go kite fishing but I explained to him that the surface fishing has been very unproductive. On a good day the boats who were kite fishing would only have one or two bites. We started out the day fishing on a deep ship wreck. The action started good when Chris landed a nice amber on his spinning rod with 20lb. braid. After catching a few more jacks we switched over to cut bait to catch vermillion snappers. We caught ten verms and on our last drops Chris’s friend landed a double header snowy grouper. Unfortunately we could only keep one do to the current regulations. Later in the day when the fishing slowed down I deployed the anchor and chummed most of our live bait. Fifteen minutes later we had two sailfish in the spread. Chris got one bite out of a small sailfish but it later jumped off. Fishing was tough for us that day but with some hard work and persistence we were able to bring some fish back to the table.

  The sailfishing has still been very poor but I believe in the next few months they will make a strong appearance. The same thing happened last year and we were seeing 20 fish days in April and May.

  I am finally starting to get some good reports on daytime swordfishing. Bobby Boyle and his crew caught four this past Sunday. That is a remarkable day and is good to hear they are finally showing up again. We are in high season now and the fishing is picking up. I still have some dates left in mid February so if you would like to get out on some South Florida Action give me a call.

 

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