Some Great Fishing!
Capt. Dean Panos
October 4, 2025
Miami - Saltwater Fishing Report
In the fall time, business slows down a bit with kids going back to school and summer vacations are over, but this fall so far has been the slowest I have seen in 20 years. It's not just me that is feeling it, but every charter boat that I know is saying the same thing. That's a shame because the few trips that we have been on have been epic.
We had a small tournament to fish out of in Pompano with one of my clients. It was a meat tournament with kingfish, wahoo, tuna and mahis as targeted species. September is best known as swordfish, wahoo, and mahis and not so much for kings and tunas. We went a day before and loaded up on bait, catching threadfin herring, sardines, goggle eyes, and cigar minnows. We were 4 livewells full of bait. Most of the boats opted to troll planers for wahoo which is pretty good this time of year. We had so much bait that I opted to put up the kites. We caught kingfish, a decent mahi, blackfin tunas, bonitos and 2 sailfish. Pretty good for just a few hours of fishing. We then went offshore and looked for mahis. Within 20 minutes we found a small school of decent mahis and caught half a dozen. For some reason I decided to run farther offshore and look for better fish. After running for over 30 minutes and starting to second guess my gut instincts, we found a massive school of good size mahis. We hooked a couple of mahis and suddenly there was a big explosion on one of our hooked mahis. Everyone thought it was a shark, but I knew it was a big blue marlin. From the tower I could see the marlin coming at us. I yelled for Billy to get our big game leader and snap it onto one of our heavier rods and hook a dead mahi from the cooler and toss it in the water. He did just that and I put the boat in gear to troll the dead mahi and within 15 feet of the transom the huge blue marlin simply inhales the dead mahi. It's now game on as we have hooked a big blue marlin. The angler did an amazing job fighting the fish and soon we had the leader on an estimated 450-pound blue marlin. That's a big blue for us here in South Florida. We quickly revived the marlin and let her loose. Catching blue marlin in Miami is not that common and to have one eat withing 15 feet of the boat was amazing. I may have been second guessing my decision to go offshore, but through the years I have learned to always trust your gut. It was an amazing day with great people.
Our next trip was to Bimini to go wahoo fishing. I also run another boat – a 44ft Contender named Kimbuktu and that is the boat we went on. The owner was on board as well as Billy. Our goal was to go high speed trolling for wahoo for a couple day. That is a kind of fishing that I truly enjoy. We crossed over, clear Bahamian Customs and Immigration and then went fishing. The first day we went 6 for 8 on wahoo fishing from noon to 4 pm. The second day we ended up catching 8 more wahoos and now had a total of 14 for our trip (you are allowed up to 18 in the Bahamas). With enough fish to feed and army so we headed back the next day. Not only was the fishing good, but the size of the wahoos was very good. This early in the season you tend to get a lot of smaller fish in the 20-pound range. All the fish we caught were much bigger and averaged 35-45 pounds. Another great trip with great people.
As I mentioned earlier, business is down a bit. We are taking advantage of the slower time by working on the boat. We just installed the newest SImrad electronics. We now have 2 new Simrad NSS 4 16inch displays down below and a new 12-inch Simrad NSS4 display on top. We also have the new Simrad Halo radar that we will be installing in the next few weeks. In the next few weeks, we will also have Aquatraction replacing our flooring so we will be quite ready for our sailfish season and beyond.
With the slow start, we can certainly use some booking, so give us a call and take advantage of the great fishing that we are having right now. October is also one of the best months of the year for daytime swordfishing and the boats that have been targeting swords have been crushing it. Give us a call and let's catch some fish. As the saying goes "you can't catch them from the couch"!
Tight Lines,
Capt. Dean Panos
Miami Fishing Forecast:
Great Daytime Swordfishing, Start to Sailfish season, Great Wahoo fishing in Bahama, still good mahi fishing
Target Species:
Swordfish, Sailfish, Mahis, Wahoo
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