Today started out as a very Ugly day! It rained most of the night and many of the boats canceled or postponed their trips. It really wasn’t blowing very hard. The rain was steady, but not a real heavy downpour. So we decided to go for it. I knew there was a pretty strong cold front coming sometime in the early afternoon and I didn’t want to wait for the rain to let up becasue then we would catch bad weather on the end of the trip. Better to head out through a little rain, than be out when the wind picked up with the cold front in the afternoon.
I’m glad we did for more than one reason. First, it was very calm on the ocean. The rain was not enough to stop us from fishing and it had pretty much stopped by 9:00 am. After that, it got nice out. Still some clouds, but very calm seas and no rain.
Second, we tried to find the ballyhoo, (baitfish), on the reef again and they were gone, We did get a few Speedo’s, (another baitfish, not the bathing suit). They are larger than Ballyhoo which can eliminate some of the larger Reef predators, but they are a tasty treat to some, like a monster King Mackerel. There were not a lot of Kings around. We caught one smaller one on dead ballyhoo at our first stop. At our second stop, we drifted out a live Speedo. It didn’t take long before there was a huge splash and a monster King mackerel had inhaled it.
We put the bait out on a 20lb spinning rod, a relatively light tackle for a bait that big. That’s what makes it fun. My angler did a great job and was very patient. It was not a fish you could rush on that tackle. The fish took about 20 minutes to land and when we weighed it at the dock it was right at 30lbs.
We ended up coming in about 20 minutes early due to the Cold front arriving. I was glad I didn’t postpone this morning. The little bit of rain we ran through was much better than the rough seas that were starting to build at the end of the day. Sometimes timing is everything