The Southbound had two trips today
A 4 hr. in the morning and a 6 hr. in the afternoon. My morning customers asked to catch Dolphin, (Mahi) and normally in January, I would have recommended against it. It’s not a good time of year. But there have been a few around the last few days, so we decided to give it a try. I figured that if we didn’t catch any dolphin, we could get on the reef and catch some Cero mackerel for dinner at the end of the trip. Unfortunately, neither worked
I heard of one or two dolphin
being caught in the morning, but not as many as had been seen the last few days. We trolled around offshore for the first hour or so without a bite. This was only a 4 hr trip so I didn’t have a lot of time. On top of that, I’m not much of a clockwatcher, but I had a second trip today so I could not stay very late if I needed to.
I bailed out to the reef for the last hour, but unfortunately, not much was happening there either. The Cero Mackerel have been plentiful most of the last week, but they have been unusually “tide sensitive”. I guess my timing was bad because neither I nor any of the boats around me were doing much on the reef.
We caught some barracudas and one Bonito. Neither of which is considered good “table fare”. I even stayed a half hour late hoping for something better, but it didn’t happen. Unfortunately, that is fishing.
On my second trip,
I had some regular customers of mine. The mackerel were biting when I got out there, but they don’t like mackerel. It would have made my life easy, but it’s not my trip and it’s not about making my life easy so we went offshore looking for Dolphin, Wahoo, and Sailfish. There had been some Sailfish around in the morning, but that got very quiet in the afternoon.
We did manage to catch some bonitos and, naturally, a nice Dolphin, (Mahi) in the afternoon. We had 2 on but one got off. I hooked almost exactly were I started looking for them on the morning trip. Same depth, same baits and lures, same speed. I was glad to catch one for the young man I had on the boat in the afternoon, but I sure would have liked to get one for my morning group. Unfortunately…..that’s fishing
The Wind had picked up
By the time we got offshore, so the seas did get a bit Sporty. The waves were 3 ft and fairly close together.