There is a tropical depression
down off the Yucatan Penninsula that is causing a lot of tropical moisture through our area. Yesterday, the rain was torrential at times. Today, it was a heavy overcast with rain squalls all around. The ride heading offshore was very “sporty” but once we got out deep the waves spread out and it really wasn’t bad. Maybe 3 ft waves. Some times worse weather means better fishing. The really calm weather is better for the fishermen, not the fishing.
As I said, it wasn’t a pretty day,
but my customers don’t “melt” and were game to go. We got out to about 300 ft of water and started trolling south. It was pretty slow at first and we didn’t’ get a strike until we got out to about 600 ft of water. We found some scattered weed in that depth and started working it east. It was a slow pick
We did release one nice sized barracuda
in about 700 ft of water. Barracudas are pretty amazing fish. I have caught them on the flats in 1-2 ft of water. I have caught them on the reef and I have caught them out as deep as 2,000 ft of water. There is an old saying “fish have tails and can go where they want”, but sometimes it’s surprising
Most of the fish were not big,
but we didn’t have to throw back any today. Normally, I want to be one of the first boats off the dock, especially when fishing for dolphin. I don’t want to fish behind other boats and catch what they missed, but the moon is full right now, and sometimes, when the moon is full, the dolphin feed at night, and in the morning they are not hungry. If this happens, they will usually start biting later in the day and that is what happened yesterday. As the day went on we started seeing more and more flocks of birds working the water and finding fish under them.
So I’m going to change up my “playbook” tomorrow.
Instead of leaving at 7 am, we are going to “sleep in” and leave at 8 am. Hopefully, this will give us a little more time at the end of the trip, and hopefully, it will be busy late in the day again. The weather is supposed to be the same, so we will see if worse weather means better fishing. Check back tomorrow to see if it worked