Time once again to get up to date with fishing activities aboard Knot Nancy.
Offshore, the main shift has been to dolphin (mahi-mahi). The fish can be found anywhere from 120 feet out to as far as you care to go offshore. Aboard Knot Nancy, our best catches have come in the 12 - 18 mile range. Scattered grass and birds have put us on the fish. On several trips we caught them out in the middle of no where under a single bird.
Meanwhile, back in on the reef, there are still blackfin tuna, kingfish, bonito, barracuda, mutton snapper, and a few sailfish. If you don't want to spend the fuel searching for dolphin, the fishing in the 100 - 200 foot range will give you your share of the action.
Inshore, tarpon are still going strong. They're feeding on live crabs and on most nights you have to wait them out till it gets dark to get the action going.
Michael Richmond, Daniel Miguel, Andrew Arnold, and Ernest Gutierrez got in on some dolphin action on their 3/4 day trip. We found scattered grass that didn't produce anything. Next it was a floating pallet that begrudgingly gave us 3 fish. More searching and more scattered grass. This time we drifted with the grass and got a reward in the form of a 25# dolphin. More searching and some weed lines and rafts of grass gave up another fish.
Ron Walker, Joe Blasetti, and Latif Taylor saw limited tarpon action on their trip. The fish were rolling all around us until it got dark. They then disappeared and it took lots of searching to find them. Latif caught and released his first tarpon and the second fish that we hooked up took us into some bottom structure and released itself.
Trevor and Evan Papkov each caught and released a tarpon on their trip. We had 4 shots at the silver kings and stayed connected and landed 2 of them.
Kevin Ryan, Alex Papastamatis, Dino Linardakis, and George Baclaska saw plenty of dolphin action on a 3/4 day trip. We found 3 different groups of dolphin all with the help of birds. One group was out in the middle of no where. 'The fish ranged in size from throw backs to 6 pounds. We kept 11 of the 25 fish that we hooked up.
Javier Downing, Jeronim J. Ramierez, Julio Ramirez, and Maurcio Horvilleur had their original tarpon trip get rained out on an evening when the thunderstorms didn't let up till almost 9 pm. Two evenings later, we waited till 7:30 pm to head down to Government Cut and it paid off. By the end of the trip, we were 3 for 5 on tarpon.
Ed, Betty, and Martin McCarthy also had to wait out the thunderstorms. It turned out to be a perfect evening in several ways. First, the family got to spend some quality time together. Second, the weather cooperated and all the remaining storms stayed away. And third, we had a perfect night of tarpon fishing going 3 for 3 on fish of 70, 80, and 90 pounds.
Alex Aru and two of his friends had some bumpy seas for their dolphin trip. The wind was from the NNE/ENE @ 11 - 14 knots. In on the reef it was 1 - 2 feet. When we were offshore dolphin fishing, it was 3 - 4 feet with 10 foot swells coming through. Frigate birds put us on the fish. We picked up mostly singles with a couple of doubles out in the middle of no where. Slow trolling or drifting live pilchards did the trick. We put 8 dolphin in the fish box and then ran back in for calmer water where we released a bonito.
The same group was back out for an evening tarpon trip. Once again we had to wait the fish out and on this evening, they evened the score a bit. We missed the first two fish with a pulled hook and a thrown hook. The third fish was the charm and everyone in the group took turns fighting the 75 pound tarpon before we released it.
We'll be out doing more dolphin trips and have several more tarpon trips scheduled before the end of June.
See you out there.
Captain Dave Kostyo
Knot Nancy Fishing Charters, Inc.
305 965-9454 Cell
www.knotnancy.com
nkostyo@bellsouth.net
