Happy New Year!

Report Date: January 1, 2014

Happy New Year’s

Another year has passed and a new one has begun. The year 2013 ended with some great fishing and good memories. I anticipate the same for 2014. Hopefully everyone had a safe and jolly holiday season.

As we begin the new year,business will pick up do to the migration of tourists coming to visit South Florida. The snowbirds can’t resist what Florida has to offer in the winter.

I was fortunate to do quite a bit of inshore fishing this past month. One of my inshore methods is to anchor the boat in 15-40 ft. and chum the shallow patch reefs . Doing this can produce good numbers of Spanish mackerel, mutton snapper, grouper, cobia, lady fish, bluefish, and the occasional sailfish. Patch fishing can produce great action and a good learning experience for children and beginners alike. My last trip we caught 75 spanish mackeral from 3-6lbs, 3 mutton snappers, red grouper, and a cobia. Most of the fish were caught on live pilchards but we did catch a fare share on artificials.

  Fishing Biscayne Bay has been producing plenty of big jack crevelles, small kingfish, trigger fish, trout, and lady fish. We catch most of these fish drifting the shallow grass flats with live shrimp and pilchards. The inshore fishing should stay good until the weather gets hot which is normally around the end of May.

Offshore fishing has been very stable as well over the past few weeks. Sailfishing has been o.k. We are averaging between 1-4 fish per trip. The king mackerel are finally starting to show with some smokers up to 50lbs being caught. Lots of bonitas and some nice sized blackfin tunas are here, if you have a lot of bait to chum with.

  On the ship wrecks there have been an abundance of amberjacks and almaco jacks. These fish are caught with live bait and vertical jigs. We caught six jacks in 7 drops the other day. I also witnessed my first true red snapper which was about 6 lbs.

  There has been plenty of action both inshore and offshore. The dates are filling up fast so if you would like to go deep sea fishing or inshore fishing now would be a good time.

I hope every one has a great new year.

  Capt. Fred David

 

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