It was another successful trip for the Catch My Drift this week. We had our usual Friday Night Open Boat swordfishing trip again. Capt. Adam took out the trip, which left at 6PM and ran 15 miles offshore to the Gulfstream. We caught nothing on our first drift, not even a scratched bait. Capt. decided to set up a different way on the second drift. Right away we catch a short swordfish. Just below legal size, so we got photos and released it. The next fish bit soon after. It ended up being a 62" forklength swordfish. We guessed the weight at 120 lbs. We had a few other nice bites that night, but the hooks wouldn't stay in. 5 bites in total, caught 2 out of those, and when we reeled up the baits to go home, we had slashed squids on every hook. There were some swordfish chewing out there that night. Everyone went home with some nice steaks and it was a good trip.
The sportfishing boats have been pulling in their fair share of fish lately too. Quite a few sails still biting on the kite or slow trolling live ballyhoo. Capt. Paulie caught 3 sailfish on Saturday and missed a fourth. In fact, a lot of boats were catching double fish that day. Kingfish on the troll has come to a complete halt. Hardly any kingfish at all for us, and trolling artificials has been all but completely unproductive. Shipwreck fishing has been yeilding some good fish this week though. We've been catching a few big grouper on the deep wrecks, and I've caught a lot of giant amberjacks this week. Looks like the spring migration of amberjack and grouper might be starting to show up.
Another cool fish we caught on Friday was a 45 lb wahoo. He bit a planer bait, and wow, what an amazing initial run. We knew it was a wahoo right away by how fast he was pulling drag off the reel. Wahooooo! Gorgeous fish when it came up, all purple and lit up with vertical bands of black, silver and gold the length of the fish. I told the mate when it came up, DO NOT MISS THIS ONE! Hehe, he did a fine job on the gaff and got the fish into the boat without incident. It was a helluva day at sea that day.
Fishing is in the transistion phase right now between winter fishing and spring fish starting to show up. The swordfish are biting better than I've ever seen them. Big game sharks are coming, and the bottom fishing is what you'll see me doing a lot of in the weeks to come. Good luck fishing guys. Until my next report...
