Saturday morning was absolutely gorgeous. Calm winds with the temperature in the lows 70 is as good as it gets. Its nice not being a sweaty mess after catching bait. Bait is good at the Skyway Bridge or flats so pick your spot and load up.
My anglers had one request and that was to target what ever is biting just keep the rods bent! After Saturdays challenges I was a little apprehensive. I picked up Joe and his brother and we were running to Egmont Key by 8 am.
I jumped up onto my tower and started looking for birds between the bridge and Ft. Desoto. Once we passed Potters pier diving birds gave away our targets location and we jumped right in. We started with live white baits and quickly changed to Clark Spoons as the action heated up.
Joe's brother rod bent double and he was hanging on for dear life, turned out a dolphin grabbed his mackerel. Needless to say the dolphin got his fish! We moved several times with the dolphins following, it was an amazing sight watching them swim boat side just looking at us.
We had mackerel jumping all around us and at times it was mackerel after mackerel. I had a hard time keeping up with unhooking feisty mackerel to 22". We could have caught 200 mackerel but wanting to change things up I ran inshore for some trout action. The trout bite was ok at best but we did manage a few keepers and a nice bluefish.
I kept calling Joe's brother by the wrong name like Walt, Jay. He answered either way! Super guys and a grand day on the water.
Captain Steven Markovich
www.onthemarkcharters.com
