Big news first…..The Spinners are Here, The Spinners are Here!!!! But more of that later….
Finally had some business come in over the holidays, and fishing over all was very entertaining. Still catching skipjack tuna when they present themselves. Which has been remarkably consistent for them. Quite often, I’ll find them one day and then they’re gone for several weeks. But they’ve been present almost everyday the weather has cooperated enough to let us offshore. In the process of skippy hunting, (and catching) this past weekend, we also caught some respectable dolphin in the five to ten pound range. Though I haven’t been targeting dolphin much recently,( we get plenty of dolphin through out the year, I’m concentrating on the skippies while they can be targeted) there have been quite a few being caught by other boats. Another offshore oddity have been a good number of false albacore, (Florida bonitos), I hear the guys trying to catch sailfish complaining about their five dollar apiece baits getting eaten by albies. The beaches have continued to increase in action and variety, the spanish mackerel schools have been joined by some truly massive schools of jack crevalle. One such school last weekend was over a half mile long, literally thousands of five to ten pound jacks blasting minnow schools. They were on the rampage for several hours, would eat anything we threw at them, and best of all we had them all to ourselves with not another boat anywhere near.
The near shore rock piles have been holding an assortment of species like king mackerel, juvenile amberjack, almaco jacks, grouper and other stuff as well. We actually had a triple header of grouper a few days ago, a first for me. Nothing huge, but a grouper on fly is just so cool and three at once is very special.
So I guess between the recent push of cool,(soon to be cold, forecast is for temps in the mid to low thirties the next two mornings) and all the food showing up, the spinner sharks decide to finally get their act together and come on in. Good numbers of sharks almost everywhere I went yesterday, strung out along all the beaches. We did take a few minutes and play with some, but didn’t manage to get a hook into any. Still, was great seeing them and I’m very excited at the prospect of the next two months of entertainment they are going to provide.
The recent cool weather, and the approaching cold weather is going to make the fishing bust loose. I have reports from north of here of massive amount of bait moving south with the predators in hot pursuit. This is shaping up to be some of the very best action in the past several years.
I do have plenty of open dates for any parties interested in stepping up to a big ol’ plate of whoop-ass…..