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We had a full day today

and went looking for some weed to work offshore and hopefully find some dolphin and or other fish. There has been a  lot of weed offshore lately. Both just outside the reef and out deeper. Problem is, most of the fish being caught along those weed lines have been small “throwback” dolphin or small Almaco Jacks also fish we throwback. I was hoping to find some bigger fish.

We fished a couple of weed lines

and patches in about 600 ft of water, but there were no good fish there. We got some action, but only one Keeper. Because it was a full day, we picked up and continued south.

About 16 miles southwest of Key West,

I found a small nicely formed sargassum weed line. It was right on top of the “wall”. The water was between 850 and 1200 ft deep.  It wasn’t big, but it looked perfect, just like the kind of line that fish would follow. We started following the line west and started catching fish, but almost all of them were small “throwback” dolphin again. Sometimes you have to stick with a line like this. It looked just too perfect and it went west as far as the eye could see. There were no other boats on it, so I figured if there were any fish on it, they would be ours.

I followed that sargassum weed line for over 10 miles.

The further west I got, the better it looked, but no matter how far west I got, we didn’t get any “keepers” at all. Just small “throwback” fish. I probably stayed on it longer than I should have. It just looked too good to leave. I just knew sooner or later, I would find something floating that would be holding fish, but it never happened. My “perfect” weed line was “little fish city”.

By the time I gave the weed line up,

I was 30 miles from Key West. In a lot of port cities, that is not an uncommon distance to be from the dock. But here, one of the advantages we have fishing these waters is that our fishing grounds are much closer. I have caught Sailfish, Dolphin, Wahoo, Tuna and even Marlin within 6-7 miles of Key West. But it hasn’t happened lately, which is why I made the “power run” today. If you are not catching quality fish close, I’ve always been willing to put some distance between the boat and Key West and at least try to find better fish.

This was the furthest from Key West

I had been in a couple of years. To be honest, I like being offshore and away from all the other boats. Today was one of those days we could look around and not see any other boats. We had a piece of the ocean all to our selves. Days like today, I didn’t care about the fuel and I didn’t care about the time. I just wanted to catch fish.

I wish I could say it worked.

But truthfully, it did not. After over 10 miles following that beautiful sargassum weed line, I finally gave it up and started working my way inshore and back toward Key West. We found more weed patches as we did and we managed to pick up a few more “keepers” as we worked inshore, but it was a tough day honestly.

I guess most boats don’t like to post “reports”

when they have a tough day. Maybe it’s not “good business”, but it’s the truth. Anyone that says they have never had a slow day, doesn’t fish very much. I have always felt it is better to post the truth every day, than post the one good catch we had 2 weeks ago and leave it up as some boat do. The whole purpose of having a “catch of the day” on my website is so people can get an honest idea of what is biting. So if it’s a tough day, I’m going to say it. I’m not sure if it is the “recommended” marketing strategy, but it has worked for me for the last 27 yrs so I guess I’ll keep doing it.

My customers were happy with the day.

They actually had a lot of action. The fish were biting steady and they were having fun. It’s just that we didn’t catch many “keepers”. We ended up with about 4 “keeper” dolphin and released about 30. Plenty of action and enough fish to take home for a couple of meals and we released a couple of BarracudasThe weather was beautiful and the seas were calm. There were a few rain squalls around, but I managed to dodge them and we never got a drop of rain.