A Zero to a Hero in 4 Trips
Capt. Bouncer Smith
September 30, 2012
Miami - Saltwater Fishing Report
From a Zero to a Hero
Last Sunday night several great guys who had bought a trip I donated to a fund raiser joined us to try and catch some snook. We tried a lot of our favorite spots, but struck out. We tried the inlet, bridges and anything else I thought might work and caught nothing.
Sunday night we had seen a lot of tarpon activity while searching for those snook. Monday night we had a charter hoping for tarpon. With all the tarpon we had seen busting on the surface the night before, we loaded up with live shrimp, caught herring and headed out with a very positive outlook.
Well, the weather had changed and those active tarpon were gone. There still weren't any snook bites.
W finally got lucky and found a couple of tarpon and managed to catch them to save the evening.
Out next trip was with our good friends and clients Don and Sandy Blake. We headed out at noon, caught a bunch of herring and ran up the beach searching for mullet migrating south and dragging tarpon with them. After no luck all the way up to Haulover Inlet we ducked inside and caught a few pilchards to add to our bait supply.
I headed offshore and found blue water at 500 feet. We started trolling and following scattered weedlines. At 790 feet of water we hit paydirt in the form of a floating bait cage. There we switched to 4, 8 and 10 pound spinning tackle baited with live pilchards. Over the next hour we caught 25 mahi, mostly of 5 to 7 pounds, 6 tripletails and 6 almaco jacks. 20 mahi were tagged and released. It was great fun.
When we had to run from a storm I switch game plans and we tried some bottom fishing and live bait fishing. The surface only produced a couple cut offs, but the bottom produced a 36 pond almaco jack, 16 pound bonito and a 9 pound mutton snappers.
That was a great day of fishing.
On Friday night Adam, Larry, Steve and Brian had planned to use 24 live lobsters in hopes of catching a couple of mysterious cubera snappers. We ran 40 miles south as the sun set over the upper Florida Keys.
When we reached our target area, we started fishing with live lobsters over 180 feet below over rough bottom. The first drift was a blank. The second drift was just the opposite as we hook up with a double catch of cubera snappers.
In 2 and half hours we were out of bait. The guys had caught 14 cubera snappers and the head of another. 12 cubera snapper had been released with the aid of the Seaqualizer.
A huge shark had taken the body of this 50 to 60 pound snapper. We caught a 150 pound shark, had a big shark chase a snapper to the boat and thought another whole snapper was eaten off our line.
We tried a couple drops with bonito strips after we ran out of lobster, but all we caught were a couple of small sharks.
That was an epic trip that almost doubled our boat record for cubera snappers.
Miami Fishing Forecast:
We should see good mahi and tuna action the next few weeks. Then sailfish mackerel and many others will take center stage
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