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Miami - Haulover to Fowey Light
Capt. Dean Panos
January 6, 2003
Miami - Saltwater Fishing Report
01/06/03
Well, the New Year started off on the right track. Both sailfishing and swordfishing have been excellent. We fished the day after New Year’s and we caught 5 out of 8 sailfish and some nice size dolphin. That evening we had good weather and I had a swordfish trip booked, so we went swording. We ended up catching 2 out of 3 swordfish, and had 2 other bites. The next day we went back to sailfishing and got three more sails. The following day we went sailfishing again and caught 4 out of 7 sailfish, along with a few dolphin. We also hooked a yellowfin tuna on 20 lb spin tackle, but after a half hour or so, we ended up pulling the hook. I didn’t get a great look at that fish, but from what I saw he was at least in the 50 lb class. On Sunday we only had a ½ day trip, and the clients wanted kingfish. We anchored up and chummed hard with both live and dead chum, but couldn’t get the kings to show up. We decided to do a drift and we hooked and lost a sailfish almost instantly.
The sailfish bite has been down south, past Fowey Light. Our best day was 5 for eight, but on the day we went 4 for 7, we saw 3 other sailfish that wouldn’t eat. That’s a total of seeing 10 sailfish in a day. The next cold front should drive even more fish our way. The piece of the puzzle to figure out though is where will these fish pop up. Typically early winter sailfishing has been really good straight out of Miami, but the best thing to do is to keep you ears on the radio and listen to where the bite is.
Swordfishing on the nights you can get out has also been very good. Right around 7:30pm the previous night we had our tip rod (rod without a float) get struck by a swordfish. The rod bent over, but then went slack. We reeled up the bait, and you know who followed it straight up to the boat. Well the blue runner didn’t stand a chance as the swordfish homed in on it and took it with one wipe of his massive bill. Thirty minutes later we had a nice swordfish to the boat. We had some more bites that we missed, and before the end of the night we caught another bigger swordfish.
Winter fishing has begun and sailfish fever is on. There really isn’t much that can beat watching a sailfish eat a kite bait and dance all over the surface, or watch your cyalume stick fly towards the surface with a couple of hundred pounds of angry swordfish at the end of your line. Sounds Good – Give us a call and lets set up a trip!
Tight Lines and Good Fishing,
Capt. Dean Panos
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