Dolphin, Swords, and the day of the Skunk!

[Captain Dave Trafton]

Dolphin, Swords, and the day of the Skunk!

Well, the anticipation of seeing what hurricane Emily would bring us in terms of floating debris in the Gulfstream got us all worked up for nothing. As of yesterday, Saturday, the ocean has remained quite clean with a few patches of weed or the random log if you’re lucky. The debris that we are finding has been holding fish, and the good new is, they have been slightly larger than the past few weeks; up to ten or twelve pounds I’d say with lots of schoolies between 5 and 7 pounds. The real trick has been finding something out there.

Out of our several trips last week we caught fish everyday, with the exception of one on Tuesday. We fished our butts off. We covered miles and miles of ocean in search of dolphin. We found decent patches of weed with lots of bait on them and couldn’t raise a single dolphin with chunks, live bait, or trolling. We then headed to our swordfishing grounds and had a beautiful spread and covered one of my favorite and most productive areas. The entire night we had only one bite on a live rainbow runner on the deep rod, and did not hook up. On the ride in we even gave a shot at dropping some herring down on a wreck that has been producing for us lately, and got skunked there as well. With our tail between our legs, and completely exhausted, we headed in without a single fish in the boat for over 12 hours of fishing. It has been a while since I have had a day like this, but it goes to show, it happens to everybody once in while. There is never a guarantee in fishing, “or it’d be called catching.” (It’s a cliché, I know, but so true.) Just the night before, another charter boat caught two swordfish that were nearly identical in size, with both fish upwards of 300 pounds each. Although rare, this proves that the big boys are out there and it could happen on any given night. The following day, we ran further to the south off of Triumph reef and found plenty of dolphin to make the day. It can truly turn around that quickly.

The week ahead looks promising, and the chance that some more debris might come our way still exists. You never know until you get out there.

As always, email your fishing questions to our ‘Tackle-N-Tactics’ corner at captdave@launchmcharters.com or catchdfish@comcast.net and I or Captain Dave Gates will be happy to help you out.

C’ya on the edge,
Captain Dave