What a great couple of weeks of fishing. This has definitely been the best fishing of the year. The sailfishing has exploded and we have gone almost double digit releases every day. In the past three days we have caught 40 sailfish out of 55 hookups and then we followed that by going daytime swordfishing the next day and catching 2 big swordfish. That is some HOT Fishing.
The best sailfish action has been right in front of Miami. We have had strong North current and for the most part blue water. The best depth has been 120 to 180 ft, but we did have one day hat they were biting very shallow in 60 to 80 feet of water. The sailfish we are catching now are mostly composed of nice big spring time sails that have been averaging 50 to 80 pounds. You know when you hook up with one of these bigger fish as the first run is usually pretty long. We did catch a sailfish a week or so ago that was pushing very close to 100 pounds. What a bruiser!
Besides the sails, they blackfin tuna have definitely shown up and it is a daily occurrence to catch at least one blackfin if not more. We have been catching them throughout the day but the peak time is late afternoon from 3 pm to dark and we do actually offer late afternoon trips strictly targeting blackfin tunas. Besides the tunas, the sails usually bite very well during those hours as well. Most of the tunas are from 20 to 35 pounds, although occasionally you will catch one of the smaller "football" ones.
There have also been some decent kingfish around. We have been sailfishing most of the time so we really have been using straight monofilament leaders and thusly have been getting cut off by the kingfish sharp teeth. You can use a small trace of #4 wire on your leaders to help you catch some more kings. Although wire doesn't necessarily hurt the amount of sailfish bites you can get, the wire does have a tendency to kink and thus you may break some fish off. Using straight mono this week, we still managed to catch a few kings, including one that was over 40 pounds.
As I mentioned earlier we also went daytime swordfishing. We went one time last week and released a small swordfish. This week following the epic sailfish action I had a very good customer and friend who caught 14 out 18 sailfish on Tuesday and then on Thursday want to go try daytime swordfishing. Our first drop we hooked a decent fish and got him all the way to the boat. It was a 200 pound sword that was released. On the next drop we had another bite that we missed, and on the last drop we had a wickedly hard bite. After fighting the fish for a little while we boated a beautiful 300 pound swordfish. What a way to finish the day and end a great week of fishing.
This great fishing should stick around for all of May and then it will be time to hed to the Bahamas and go tuna fishing and snapper fishing as well as enjoy the good weather and do a lot of day and night swordfishing. Book your trips now for May and for the summer. Time is of the essence so let's go catch some fish!
Please click on the link below and see a father and son catch some Miami Sailfish.
http://youtu.be/95cw7ykKZl8
Tight Lines,
Capt. Dean Panos
www.doubledcharters.com
