PHEW is all I can say!! The wind has been blowing for 10 days or so and it has made things very interesting to say the least. Seas have been an average of 5’ to 8’ and depending on what the tide is doing {outgoing} has been 10’. Now if you can imagine a 10’ wave in 12’ of water you will understand our pain. On the bright side of things fishing has been outstanding! I have been doing all reef and bottom fishing lately as it seems to be the most comfortable for all involved. I have been setting the anchor in about 80’ and giving lots of scope, of course, sitting in 55’. It has worked out rather well, the yellowtail are chewing. The fish have been ranging from 2lb up to 4lb, real nice class of snapper, also lots of small cero mackerels and a handful of 8 to 10lb king mackerels. The bottom has been fun and holding some Cobia and a few Grouper.
Check out the nice Nassau Grouper we caught and released {endangered} beautiful fish, he ate a small grunt. Again I have to say these new Torque rods are awesome, the action is perfect. We have also been catching several 8 to 10lb mutton snappers. The Gotcha lures continue to be a very productive lure for us, seems as if the dirtier the water gets the better they work...hmmmm go figure. The reef is alive & just a little rough. We are supposed to start getting a little relief starting Monday so we shall see. The nice part is that the fishing should continue to be very productive and hopefully, we can get offshore. I’m certain there will be a pretty good Dolphin bite as well as the Tunas. We are taking a few days off as we are beat up! But we will be back at it starting Wednesday as we are going to be doing quite a few Swordfish trips the next Two weeks...so stay tuned. Hopefully the winds will go away for some time, it would sure help!!
What a week of weather we had this week. We were plagued by over thirty knots of wind pretty much all week with only sneaking one day in offshore this week. When we got out offshore is wasn’t red hot but we did manage to put together a good catch. In about 4 hours we did get a bunch of blackfins while picking up a double header of wahoo. Since it was so rough we did a lot of fishing in the Sea of Abaco with excellent results.
Fishing in the backwater here remains nothing short of spectacular. Every day we seem to catch a couple mutton snapper, some closing in on the 15lb mark. Along with the muttons we are getting a lot of yellowtails to 4 lbs as well as some nice Nassau grouper and yellowfin grouper. The key to fishing has been finding live bait. We can manage to put together a good catch every day but when we seem to find live speedos and ballyhoo our nice muttons and groupers love it.
While we are fishing back here we continue to watch the depth finder looking for some new spots. Anchoring up on some of the ledges we have found here is the key. We have found some ledges that drop from 12 to 28 feet. Trying to anchor on the deep side about 100 feet from the ledge is key. Once you put your chum bag in the water it's game on. If finding live bait is difficult getting some fresh conch slop as well as cut ballyhoo and squid , all seem to work.
We did get some reports this week from Cat Island as they had a good hoo bite once again. JR called to tell me she caught one that was 65 lbs . In Cat getting the hoos before the sharks get them is still tough as they got one wahoo head that would have been in the 130 lb range.
We are finally looking for the wind to drop out at the beginning of the week and expect to get some offshore action in. We are looking for the hoo bite to still remain strong as we progress towards our main dolphin migration in April and May. Getting a shot at some billfish on a daily basis is just around the corner.
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