What a week this has been. The weather moving into the gulf has finally slowed us down, although I think this morning would have been a good one. This past week we entertained the guys from Marlin Magazine and some of their clients with panoptix sunglasses and Berkley/Trilene. We were trying to kill several birds with one stone and that was to catch fish, get some quality photos for the magazine, and to make it interesting enough to get an article in the magazine. Well, I think we accomplished all of the above. Last Tuesday we started out looking for Tuna and then we were going to head to the rip once it formed up better. Our first line out Tues. morning resulted in a nice 50lb. yellowfin tuna and then the action slowed. After 45 minutes of nothing I decided to chum and see what results we would get. 1st line out rainbow runner. 2nd line out 300lb. blue marlin. This is the first time I have caught a blue marlin on chum. At first I thought he was a Shark because he just swam off slowly and never pulled any drag. Next thing you know line goes straight out and up and he jumped. A big change of emotion followed as he tail walked leaving a 25ft. troff in the water. Thursday was a little different. A perfect rip lined formed on our way out in the morning and we stayed with it all day. The results were 2 bull dolphin, 3 medium sized dolphin, and 2 wahoo in the 20-25lb. range. Also, we missed a small blue that struck at our flat line 3 times and saw a gigantic blue earlier in the day that was not interested in anything we had at all but the size of the beast was incredible. Friday we had the Craig Budinich group in from all over the country. Our first stop resulted in 1 bull dolphin and two very small blackfin tuna and off to the rip we went. The rip line was better than the day before. Lots of current in it, a lot of grass, and neverending. Our first rip-line bite of the day was about a 20lb. wahoo which came into the boat easily. After that not another bite until about 1:00 pm when about a 100-150lb. blue hit the flat line twice and missed. I free spooled back and he was on screaming drag. The only jump we got out of him was a quick one and we fought him until about 3ft. from the leader. The gloves were on and the hooked pulled. We got everything we would have got from him anyway. The only thing the rip lines were lacking this past week were bull dolphin. Not a whole bunch of them were on the line. Yesterday we made a quick snapper trip and limited out by noon. There were a lot of yellowfin tuna out there but they were almost impossible to get to bite. We tried everything in the arsenal. But they are showing up more and more and having a lot more size then the ones we were seeing. This upcoming week should be a good one. We have open dates this week and next week if anyone wants in on the action.
Damon McKnight/Super Strike Charters/1 800 318 1720