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Miami - Haulover to Fowey Light
Capt. Dean Panos
September 10, 2003
Miami - Saltwater Fishing Report
09/10/03
The past two weeks, I have been fairly busy with swordfish trips. I have been doing 3 –5 trips per week, and am happy to report that we caught swordfish on every trip but one. We fished practically every condition from blustery East winds, flat calm evenings, huge slow rolling swells, and hard North wind with breaking seas. You have to make adjustments to each condition and luckily we got to catch fish in all those different seas.
On one of our best trips this past two weeks, we had not only one double header of swordfish, but had two doubleheaders in one night. Just as a fisherman’s tale though, the one we lost was the biggest one. We had one rod whack a 100 ft tip rod bait. All you heard was a little bit of drag go off and then stop. I told the angler to wait 30 seconds, and if nothing was there, to reel the bait up pretty fast. The movement of the bait in the water might be enough to trigger another strike if the swordfish was still nearby. No sooner than he started reeling up, the rod bent over with a lot of pressure from what seemed like a good size fish. With close to 300 yards of line out, the fish started breaking to the surface. As we got closer, the fish stared sounding again, and then unfortunately the hook pulled. We were not disappointed though, since we had already caught some swordfish that night, and it is not every night that you get two doubleheaders in one night.
Last night the wind was coming pretty strong from the North. For the past few days, there was a good north swell in the Gulfstream, and the higher wind was now causing the swells to steepen and start breaking. Luckily by 9:15pm we had the first fish on. After a pretty good fight (30 – 40 minutes) we reeled in a small swordfish, but legal in size. What was interesting was that we thought this swordfish would have been much bigger, but he was hooked in the base of the tail. That will obviously make the fight that much harder. Being that he was dragged in backwards, that fish was pretty much spent by the time he got boatside, and since he was 3 inches over legal size, we kept him for the dinner table. With the waves still breaking, we called it an early night and left by 10:00pm.
For the daytime scene, kingfishing has started to pick up and seems to be much better in the morning. There are still some dolphin offshore, and when the conditions are right, there have been a few sailfish caught as well. The day fishing will start picking up steadily in the next month or so, and the best swordfish months are here. Last year, September through November were great months, and I expect the same this year. The swordfish get much bigger this time of year and we catch quite a few more pumpkins (swordfish with orange colored meat which tastes even better than regular swordfish). In the past two weeks, we caught two pumpkins, so they are already showing up.
Whether its day or night, give me a shout and lets set up that trip.
Tight Lines and Good Fishing,
Capt. Dean Panos
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