March brimgs some crazy weather and wild fishing. Last week water temp's where holding in high 60s inshore and low 70s offshore. after this last cold front that came through central florida that only lasted for a day, was enough to cool the water back down a few degrees,and with the strong west winds that followed, slowed the fishing down.
now for some good news !
Thusday on board the E-SEA GOIN i had an afternoon half day charter with three very nice people. I told them fishing inshore was slow, but we should have no problem catching a bunch of puppy sharks. they siad that was fine as long as we catch some thing. I whent out to a reef about 8 miles offshore and didnt get a bite there.Now I'm starting to get a little worried, So i ran out to some artficial reefs in 68 foot and anchored up, its was only a few minutes before we hooked our first fish of the day, by now I'm ready to see some sharks ,and to my surprise it turned out to be a fat Gag grouper, we caought two more of those fat Gag's. That made the charters day and mine too. Just shows you that you never know whats going to bite the end of your line.
THE GOOD NEW IS THAT GROUPER ARE COMING INSHORE TO SPAWN!
Inshore bottom fishing at the 70 foot to the 100 foot reefs are porducing small red snpper, beeliners, triggers,lane snapper and puppy sharks.Offshore bottom fishing has been about the same as last week but it has slowed down quite a bit, with nice catches of red snapper and grouper on the 21 fathom out to the steeples.AJ are on the steeples and 28 fathom wrecks.
Trolling inshore has slowed down as well with some smaller king mackerel in the 8 to 10 lbs range on the 70 foot reefs, bonito's are mixed in with the king's.
Offshore trolling is very slow with an occasional Wahoo and not too much of anything else.Guess we have to wait awhile longer to put those bootom rods up.
