We headed out on a Saturday morning with a plan to head south to do some bottom fishing off the reefs south of Fowey Light. The thought was to buy some bait from the local live bait boat (Ashley) to save time rather than catching it. When Pedro from Ashley's Bait Boat, reported that some dolphins were being caught in about 1000 feet. Of course, we all turned to each other and said, let's do it! We headed straight out east of Government Cut without any doubt in our mind that this might be a waste of time since dolphin has been a hit or miss, but our positive thoughts were our reassurance. As we reached about 950 feet, we started to see signs of weed patches. Since our original plan was to fish the reefs down south, we started to head in that direction. Staying at this depth, we found an area with large patches and started pitching live bait. "Dolphin!" one of my team mates screamed. A few minutes later, a couple of dolphins were in the fish box. A few schoolies were caught in between, but were released. We continued on and in search for more dolphin, but after a half hour, we all decided to venture south in quest of our original plan. We arrived at our final destination and anchored up in 70 feet of water. The chum bag was deployed and immediately we had ballyhoo and speedos feeding from our chum slick. Perfect bait for the bottom came to mind, so we rigged a rod with a couple of gold hooks and baited them with very small pieces of bonito. In no time we had some fresh ballyhoo and speedos in the livewell. Since we were four anglers on the boat, we took turns targeting species at different water columns to avoid getting tangled. Two guys were using glass minnows on a short shank hook and drifting the bait behind the boat on a 1.5 knot current flow. Keeping the bail open and creating a constant feed proved to be very productive for a total of 28 yellowtails. Within this process; sudden strong strikes and cut offs were experienced, so we knew several toothy critters were out there. We rigged up a couple of spinner rods with long shank 2/0 hooks and baited them with a whole live ballyhoo. Casting them as far as possible behind the boat; the bait didn't sit out there too long, until BANG!! Fish on! We ended up catching 8 nice cero mackerels, 1 kingfish, and 1 barracuda. The speedos were also put to good use. On a heavy bottom rod set up front at the bow, a whole speedo was deployed on the bottom. The rod was set in a rod holder and closely watched. Five minutes passed and all of the sudden the rod was bent. After a little struggle and a nice fight, a nice 13 lb black grouper was in the fish box. We repeated this action again, but this time we used a whole live ballyhoo. Within a few minutes another fish was on. This time it was a mutton snapper. What a great day, we couldn't believe the variety of fish we had in the fish box. Great day, good friends, and a variety fish, what more could an angler ask for.
