GREAT Summer Fishing! This May has honestly been the best I have ever experienced – just about everything has been biting! Excellent gaffer dolphin, tons of snake kings, good flounder fishing, excellent drum – you name it, it’s happening!

This is some serious big fish on light tackle – particularly the butterfly jig fishing (check out the 5/31 report!). Talk about some exciting stuff!

[b]I still have plenty of GREAT dates open – including Friday the 8th, 11th &12th (great for tailing reds), 13th, 16th, 17th, etc. With fishing as hot as it is now – these dates won’t stay open for long![/b]

6/2 – Fished today with the Hines group. We had a good window to fish in the morning – it was sloppy but there was little wind and we got out about 10 miles in no time. …and man, did we find a great king mackerel bite.

The bite was so auto-matic that we didn’t go 5 minutes without a knockdown for several hours. We got a limit of kings in no time using yo-zuris and light spinning rods. We continued to pull for them, releasing a bunch. At times the bit was so auto-matic that I actually had them smacking the deep-divers in the propwash as we were putting them back. That’s pretty awesome! Today I could have TOASTED them on the fly rod.

Byt the time we got around to bottom fish it was pretty rough and starting to get worse. We landed a bunch of seabass, several sharks and a nice trigger before we decided to call it a day.

Awesome work guys!

5/31 – Today I fished with Terrance and Ashley and we had dolphin on the brain. My friend, Captain Scott, also came along to help out. There was just about no weed in sight today and the bite started off slow – we went a good hour without a knock-down before we found a good concentration of gaffers. After that – it was pretty hot for a good while. The first fish was a really nice Bull and we followed suit with another bull and several cows that were biting as soon as we would drop baits back.

We had one cow eat two baits and make a mess of two rods – while Scott was straitening things out, I saw some good marks on the sonar and decided to play with my butterfly jigs (big mistake for our backs). I hooked fish on my first 4 drops, as I found the mother-load of huge reef donkeys (amberjacks). We switched over to those guys and I proceeded to make everyone HURT. We lost a few to the structure, but Terrance and Scott landed the first two fish. During this time, we tried to bottom fish with cigar minnows and squid….and we caught more AJs…

While Scott, Ashley and Terrence were all getting their butts kicked by AJs at the same time – a nice 38″ cobia followed one of the AJs to the surface. I tossed a bucktail his way and he hammered it – and being that everyone was tied up with AJs…I HAD to fight the cobia. SHAME. 😀

Most of the AJs we landed were in the 20-30lb class. We hooked a bunch that were larger but lost them to the structure. Even with my specialized set-ups and 60lb braid – those fish will put you to the test.

After everyone was exhausted, I even got to butterfly jig up an AJ. I have to say it – those butterfly jigs are an absolute hoot and are extremely effective. When used with braid, you can drop them down in a heart-beat and when cranking them to the surface, the hits feel like absolute freight trains. There are few experiences like it!!

Surprise Cobia!

My butterfly-jig AJ!

5/29 – Today I had ones of my favorite groups – the Wolf party from Maryland. They’ve fished with me for the last several years and every time they do – they have slick calm weather (no joke). Today it was a pane of glass.

We started the day with a quick Atlantic Bonito and by picking away at the kings on both yo-zuris and live cigar minnows. Once we got a few in, we moved over to the flounder and bottom fish.

We started off with a nice blacktip but had a slow start with the flounder (lots of little seabass) but we got to them after an hour or so. Today they wanted big baits -BIG cigars, BIG cub mackerel, etc. We got a few on smaller baits but our huge baits produced flounder almost as soon as they hit the bottom. And it wasn’t that the flounder were big (most were 16-18″) it was that they were that picky. We ended up getting a nice mess of them though. Once we ran out of bait, we back to the kings and we quickly landed a couple on yo-zuris before heading back to the barn

As always though – Lauren out-fished me, her dad and her brother.

5/28 – ?I took out a great group today in search of some flatties. The king bite was a bit slow but we found the flounders and did quick work of them – landing a dozen or so and keeping 6 nice ones. We also caught a smorgasboard of seabass, triggerfish, sharks, etc.

Lori and Beth with a few nice flounder!

5/26 – Usually I refuse to work on memorial day saturday but with the forcast calling for 5 or less…and all the great dolphin fishing…well, I just had to go offshore (For fun, too). So Katie and I and her former classmate (they grad-um-aw-ated) Michael went to find some Dolphin.

We left late (6:30am), got to the stream by 8:30 and in 10 minutes I had a spread of 6 lines out…and 5 minutes later we had 4 huge gaffers on creating absolute havoc. We jumped a small cow off (less than 15lbs) and Michael expertly brought in two cows (18 and 26lbs) while Katie fought a beast of a bull. I estimate that he went an easy 40lbs and probably went 50. The fight lasted for an hour, and I hate to say it – he kicked all of our asses and my 20lb tackle was no match for his brute strength. But regardless, after 10 runs, 20+ jumps – we got him to the boat and I leadered him 5 times (and got completely drenched) before he looked me in the eye and dove for the bottom – snapping the line. I was heart-broken but Katie was just glad the fight was over and that the big fish got away…because she’s counting it as a catch!

So I put 5 lines out again. 5 minutes later – we have 3 big gaffers on. We bring 2 in – a 19lb cow and a 28lb bull. The third fish was a nice cow that I tagged and released.

After that – it was all fun fishing. We tagged and released about 10 nice gaffers over the course of the morning and afternoon – a few boats that saw my doing it thought I was nuts…but what were we going to do with all that meat? Our 4 fish weight about 90lbs in total and we filled a 5 gallon bucket with steaks! That’s a TON of fish!

Only wish was that I could have gotten one on the fly – soon!

Tagged and Released!

5/25 – Today I fished with the lovely Beverly – while its not the first time, it’s not often I get a request from a lady to take her out on her own. Let me say – This gal can fish and not only that, she can cast my baitcasters farther than i can (without any backlash – ever). Wow!

We had quite the day too. It started off early with lots of doulbe headers on the yo-zuris. First a few false albacore, than we found the king mackerel – and we put a limit in the box quickly using both zo-zuris and live bait. After we did that – it was off to do a little bottom fishing.

Fishing in only 60 foot of water, we found the mother-load of seabass and put about 15 bigguns in the box using live cigar minnows. We also found a bunch of other stuff – big bluefish, flounder, triggerfish and a couple NICE gag grouper! (not bad for only 60 foot of water!)…we also had a big school of finicky amberjack around the boat for a while and lost some big fish (probably a few nice grouper). Great job Beverely – can’t wait to have you back!

Yankin’ on a grouper!

5/22 – Katie, Scott and I slipped out for a quick afternoon trip seeing if we could find a few dolphin a bit closer to shore than the stream. Well, we did – got our first hook-up in less than 10 minutes and managed a few more in short succession. With several 15lb+ fish in the box we called it a day after pulling baits for less than 2 hours!