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Jupiter & Palm Beach Offshore Saltwater Fishing Report
Capt. Rob Mazzei
August 26, 2003
Jupiter - Saltwater Fishing Report
Wild Weather and Wahoo!
About three hours after I posted my last report and commented about how great the weather had been, our area was hit by some of the strongest tornadoes on record. I'm glad I'm better at fishing than predicting weather. But as predicted we experienced excellent wahoo during the days leading up to the full moon.
We broke out the wire line, planers and downriggers and did the high-speed trolling thing three mornings in a row and were rewarded with three wahoo 19,22 and 53lbs. The two smaller ones were caught off the wire line rod trollong a black and red Billy Bait. The third morning we had no bites on the wire or planer, I noticed a decent amount of flying fish getting up in the area so I put on a blue and white Illander, rigged over a large "octopus skirt" and trolled that way back at 6.5 knots and got crushed by the big wahoo 10 minutes later. We weighed at Grand Slam in Jupiter, 53lbs. my largest "hoo" to date. Schweet!
During those trolling days my boat literally cover over 100 miles of ocean, back and forth, in and out. It paid off but with gas prices rising as fast as they are we returned to our normal live bait routine.
We have not been disappointed! Kingfish are still snapping up almost every bait deployed. We haven't caught any real "smokers" but all the fish are from 10-25lbs. 70-90 feet east of Jupiter has produced best for us.
Kings are not the only game in town. Underneath the kings we've caught mangrove snapper to 10lbs., and many mutton snapper to 8lbs. We have used the dead bait from the live well and sent them down on a typical double or triple hook rig and have done well.
The only problem we had was that the kings have been so aggressive they're eating the dead bait as readily as the live bait. Not the worse thing to happen but for those of us who get tired fighting kings and want some snapper for dinner they can become a burden.
At times we've used only monofilament leaders, so when a king hit, he cut off the without a tussle and we just retied on a new rig.
We caught our first dolphin in a few weeks. Where they at? There have been well deifined weedlines in 600 feet with only a few schooloies underneath, very discouraging!
Bonito are thinning out rapidly. That means we'll have to work a little harder to find steady action.
Snook season opens Sept.1st so anticipate crowds at the jetty and pier. I haven't fished for them so I can't say how the bite has been.
Look for schools of finger mullet to start their migration any day now. Last year they showed up in late August, with them were big tarpon, snook, jacks, sharks, kings and even sailfish chasing them along the beach.
Anyone swimming north of Jupiter towards Blowing Rock should be advised the there have been numerous bull shark sitings up that way and Coral Cove park was closed to swimmers when lifeguards spotted a larger bull shark cruising just beyond the surf.
To anyone who has emailed recently, I apologized if I have not returned their message. The virus has effected my computer and my virus program has filtered some important messages.
I'm offering a end of summer charter special!
$50 off a charter. Up to 4 people, rates are:
4 hours $200
6 hours $275
8 hours $350
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