Between the sailfish offshore and the tarpon off the beach, the action couldn't get any better. This latest cold front has kicked the fishing up another notch from what has already been outstanding fishing.
Ed Nader wanted his friend Stephane Debommarez, who is visiting from Africa, to experience the tarpon action we have off Miami Beach. The great action started with our first drift and continued on throughout the entire evening. It didn't matter much where we set up as the fish we all along a 1 ½ mile stretch of the beach. Stephane caught and released his first tarpon and added several more including one of 80 pounds. Ed caught several himself and when we called it an evening about 4 ½ hours after we started, the final total was 6 for 8. We were also fortunate enough to get the tarpon genetics DNA tagging (http://research.myfwc.com/features/view_article.asp?id=26602 ) of 5 of the tarpon.
Court Conover and his daughter and son-in-law Meghan and Eric Brewer had visions of sailfish on their minds. We started out by loading the livewell with pilchards. Our first stop was straight out from Haulover. Despite some heavy live chumming, we had no action. We moved south to the Twin Towers area. The chumming brought up a bonito that Eric made quick work of. To date, this was the largest fish he had caught. Several minutes later I set up a drift and before I could put out the sea anchor, we had our first sailfish on. Eric fought this fish also while Court took pictures. Meghan was doing everything she could to battle a bout of motion sickness. After landing and releasing the sailfish, Eric declared that he had broken his biggest fish record twice in one trip. The drift was reset and out went several scoops of live pilchards. In a matter of minutes, we watched a sail chasing the free offerings. The birds would flock to where the sail was chasing baits to the surface. I pulled the sea anchor to move in a bit shallower. As soon as I put it on the deck, Court picked up one of the rods that had a strike and he was fast into a sail of his own. After a 20 minute battle of long runs, jumps, head shakes, and deep dives Court's sailfish was released. At this point Meghan had all she could handle with the motion sickness and we made the run back to calmer water and the feeling of solid ground at the dock. Meghan hung in much longer than most people would have and I have to admire her for that. She wants to come back and go tarpon fishing where we can usually find much calmer water.
Captain Dave Kostyo
Knot Nancy Fishing Charters, Inc
305-965-9454
www.knotnancy.com
nkostyo@bellsouth.net