We have had some really good fishing the last two nights. We took out some guys from the MTV awards show on Tuesday night. They only had two and a half hours to fish. In that time we caught bait ( not very easy at the time), executed a rescue with EMS and the Coast Guard and caught a few nice fish. We targeted snook in the inlet. The first bait in the water was struck when it hit the water, but the fish got away. The second bait was a nice tarpon. With 3 or 4 breaks in the action to help a hooked angler on the jetty get rescued, we still ended up with that tarpon, 4 snook and a bunch of ?big ones that got away?. The guy on the jetty had a plug with two big treble hooks rigged on his rod. He had a 5 pound jack on one hook and the other hook in his arm. He had no pliers to cut the line or hooks. Being out on the jetty?s rough terrain with no tools had him stuck in place. EMS couldn?t risk climbing out to him. We couldn?t drive into the rocks to get him. We convinced the Coast Guard to dispatch an inflatable to pull up to the rocks and pick up the poor guy. Always keep a pair of cutting pliers on you when your fishing. They need to be on you all the time. They may save your life.
Wednesday night we went sword fishing with Steve and Darin. On the way out, I spotted a 8 foot 2X4 floating 15 miles offshore. We caught 20 dolphin in short order. I was sure we had caught 8 or 10 and released a couple of those. You could have knocked me over with a sneeze when I learned we had put 18 dolphin in the box. It was a good lesson in staying in touch with your catch count. We never would have kept that many if we had realized how many we had caught.
We ran a couple more miles and put out the swordfish spread. We fished two rigged squid and two live baits. With no moon, we fished one bait with no lead other than the batteries in the blue light 30 feet above the bait. This bait hung 80 feet below a jug float. The other lines were down 100 to 300 feet. Fishing in 1140 to 1160 feet of water we caught 4 out of 5 swordfish. 4 of the fish were hooked on the same setup described above. The other swam up to the boat while we fought the first fish of the night and we fed him a live speedo. We saw one other swordfish in the glow of the Hydro Glow Fish Light. All the fish were 46 to 52 inch lower jaw to fork of tail length. One that was hooked deep down the throat was kept for dinner. Each time we caught a swordfish we ran back to the same numbers, set up another drift and caught another swordfish or a shark.
Our last action was catching one of two shark that struck about 11 PM. The shark was a night shark of about 125 to 150 pounds.
Prime swordfish season is over the next two months. We have a few dates left, so let?s plan a trip. E-mail capt.bouncer@att.net
