The past few weeks we have definitely had our fair share of inclement weather. Besides it being rather windy, we also had 4 days of torrential rain. The rain is gone and the wind will come and go with each approaching cold front. The good news is the cold fronts definitely spark up the fishing which is why South Florida is a hard place to beat in the winter when it comes to fishing. Before the heavy rain, the fishing was actually very, very good. With decent looking water and good north current, there were plenty of sailfish around. Our best day we caught 7 out of 8 sailfish and most days prior to the rain we were averaging 5 or so sailfish per day. The mahi were also rather thick on the edge and catching 10 to 20 mahis per trip was the norm.
Then the rain came for 4 days and what usually happens with that much rain is that the inland floodgates are opened to alleviate any inland flooding, but that fresh water enters into our inland and near shore waters and dirties the water up. Instead of clean blue offshore water, we had dirty green inland water. That coupled with a south current kept the green water around for a bit. Good news is that the green water is on its way out and cleaner offshore water is replacing it. Even with the green water, we still managed to catch some fish. We caught sailfish on every one of our trips and as many as three per trip, but we did have one trip we didn't catch one, but we did hook one that trip that didn't stay tight. Besides sailfish, the mahis are still around and in decent numbers and size. Almost all the mahis we caught were gaffers between 8 and 20 pounds. There have also been some decent kingfish around as well as some mutton snappers on the bottom. I could only imagine how much better the fishing would have been if we had clean blue water with north current.
We also managed one evening swordfish trip in between the windy days and did catch a decent swordfish of around 120 pounds. To top it off it was also a pumpkin. That fish was hooked in the pectoral fin and stripped out about 300 yards of line swimming fast on the top. With that much line out in a few minutes, everyone on board including myself thought that this was a really big swordfish, only after we got him to the boat did we realize that he was foul hooked.
The fishing is already decent and with more cold fronts on the way it is only going to get better. We still hoping for a weather window where we can run to Bimini and do some high speed trolling for wahoo. In the meantime we'll stay on the edge and put up the kites and enjoy some great early season sailfish and mahi action! I still have some openings for November and December so take advantage of the fishing and come check out the new boat. Give me a call and lets set up some trips.
Tight Lines,
Capt. Dean Panos
www.doubledcharters.com
(954)805-8231
