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 We had 2 half day trips today.

So it was a busy day.  I wish we had enough time to look for some live bait, but there just isn’t time on a half day. My people were not interested in anchoring and fishing for Yellow Tail snapper so we went trolling. Fishing was better than Yesterday. We managed to catch everyone a fish. But we did have to work at it.

On the morning trip.

I trolled out to about 300 ft of water. The water looked good, but no one was catching much. Some boats went out deep looking for Dolphin, (Mahi), but they all ended up coming back inshore looking for bites before the day was over.

Because it was just a half day

, and I didn’t have much time, we came into the reef fairly quickly. We did manage to catch some barracudas and some jacks. Our smallest angler caught the biggest fish. A big Barracuda. I always enjoy it when young children have fun on the boat. That is really the goal of family fishing and I try not to lose sight of that.

The afternoon trip

was not much different than the morning. I did try a different area in the afternoon. I went up to the east and started out on the Vandenberg. That is an artificial reef that was sunk a few years back. It can be very good fishing around the wreck, but unfortunately not this afternoon.

There was a ton of scattered Sargasso weed

around the wreck. Sargasso weed grows on the surface of the ocean and is normally very good for fishing especially when it is in big patches. But when it is scattered out in small clumps all over the ocean, it makes it very difficult to troll. The mate is constantly “pulling weed” off the baits. Fish like the ballyhoo we use to troll, but they don’t like a salad with their meal. A good mate really has to work hard when there is lots of scattered weed and it makes catching fish much harder.

I didn’t stay around the wreck very long,

we could not keep a bait clean long enough for a fish to eat it. We moved up the reef.

Big Barracuda caught and released in Key West fishing on charter boat Southbound

I’ve mentioned in other reports

that the reef has been more difficult this year. It’s because the normal bait fish, Ballyhoo, never moved out to the reef and they are a major food source for many of the reef inhabitants. But if you look hard enough, there are still a few bites to be had. We manage to catch a few Barracudas, including one pretty big one and some jacks. Not a stellar trip, but everyone caught a fish and the weather was fantastic. Unfortunately, that’s the way half day trips sometimes go.