Hot and Wet!
Capt. Jim Hobales
August 6, 2014
Flamingo - Saltwater Fishing Report
I am just coming off a busy 10 days of fishing, a few days with my family over in Marco Island, a small tournament out of Key Largo, a great trip to Flamingo and a local trip out of Miami Beach. The conditions varied from strong west winds which killed the fishing over in Marco to no winds at Flamingo which produced a nice bite. We are in August and it been around the 90 degree mark most days, I haven't been rained on while on the water. There has been large Mullet schools on most of the flats at Flamingo which are holding some big fish.
080114
I am in Key Largo today fishing a small corporate tournament of about 25 boats, the conditions were good but my decision on where to fish did not pay off. Mike, Ken and Vinny all fished hard but the fish weren't there. I made a commitment to fish an area I have done good in and with a short fishing day I was locked in to it. Jacks and some decent Mangrove Snappers made up the catch of the day although Mike had what looked like a nice Snook come up eat his bait and turn back into a stump breaking him off. It was hot and it made for a long day.
080214
I am with customers and what have become great friends over the years Ross and Mindy from Chicago at Flamingo. They are on their last couple days of vacation and really wanted to bend the rod allot! I made one cast on a Mullet school and netted 20 decent sized Mullet and ran to first spot looking for Tarpon. I had Ross throwing a Rapala Sub-Walk, he had a giant school of big Jacks boil up behind his lure. The next thing I heard was drag, Mindy cast and hooked up and then I made a cast and hooked up. We landed all three fish that were @ 8 lbs. and then they were gone. There was a boat in the area I was working towards so I went to another spot and it paid off good! Ross still with the Rapala had a couple quick hits and landed a couple Jacks and a Snook. We working a bar and down the shoreline from us something kept blowing up bait so I moved down to the area. Ross kept casting and Mindy's bait was right in the middle of the feeding fish and she's got a Snook hooked up, after a short fight it jumped off right at the boat. The next half hour was pretty good on that spot Mindy had a 24" Redfish and then Ross had a 32" Redfish along with a few more bites there. It slowed down and we moved back to the original spot and that's when it all went crazy. We were throwing swim baits and getting hit by Snook on every cast! The Tarpon were smashing mullet schools, we put our live mullet in the middle only to have the Sharks eat them. We would throw the mullet in front of the Tarpon and the mullet wouldn't last 30 seconds only it was the Sharks eating them. At one point we had a 200 lb. Bull Shark running west and a 20 lb. Spinner going south lots of fun! Once we landed the Bull Shark we caught a handful more Snook.
080414
This morning I picked up Stan and his son Roland from South Africa at the Purdy Ramp on South Beach . It was pretty interesting morning because we had Hurricane Bertha east of the Bahamas's and we could see the cloud formations over the ocean. They were interested in Tarpon and that's not really an easy target in August but I new a spot that could possible have a few resident fish. I had Roland throwing the Rapala Sub-walk and his dad with a swim bait. As I motored in to the spot the Tarpon rolled which let us know they were there. It didn't take long and Stan had a Jack pulling some drag after he released it and shortly after hooked another. We kept casting and then Stan hooked the fish of the day which was off to the races. We chased the fish all around for 5 minutes as the fish was coming up to jump
it was gone, cut off on a submerged crab trap. That really sucked but Stan was good with it. We moved around to few areas and got into a good Trout bite, each spot produced a couple small ones. The last spot we hit was where we caught @ 15 Trout to 18 inches. We called it a morning and that's about when the weather just changed and the rains came down.
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