This is a great time of year to be fishing

[Captain Dean Panos]

4/30/06


This is a great time of year to be fishing. This past week, there has been an incredible sailfish bite off of Miami with many boats getting 8 – 12 shots a day. Our best day we had 8 sails. Most of the action has been in the late afternoon. Besides the sailfish, a few blackfin tunas have been showing up, unfortunately not on our lines yet. The good news though, is they are starting to appear and usually May is the best month for them. Late afternoons have been best as well, and having lots of live bait to chum with is key. Blackfins are one of my favorite fish to catch, so hopefully we’ll have a good year for them.

Dolphin fishing has been a bit of hit or miss this past week, but some of the nicer kingfish are filling in the void. Some of these fish are pushing 40 pounds and there have been plenty of kings in the 30 pound range. There have also been some big amberjacks on the wrecks.

Nighttime fishing for tarpon has been excellent with almost all the boats getting 2 to 5 shots an evening. The nighttime swordfishing slowed down a bit, but picked up last week. We had 2 trips a week and a half ago. We caught 2 fish on the first night, and pulled one off the second night. We didn’t get a lot of bites, and if you capitalized on your bites, you did well. I didn’t have any sword trips last week, but from the guys I spoke to, they were getting 2 to 4 shots a night and at least one boat caught a fish in the 250-pound range.

Now you can see why this is one of the best times to fish in South Florida. I am booked pretty solid for sword trips in the next two weeks (hopefully the wind lays down a bit) but I do have openings for day trips. Give me a call and lets catch them up.

P.S. Now is the time to book those summer evening swordfish trips as well as Bahamas trips. With the exception of 4 days, the entire month of June is already booked. I also have open dates for most of the summer swordfish tournaments including the Islamorada Sword Tournament on Aug 11 –13 and the Miami Sword Tournament on Sept 8 –10th.

Tight Lines,
Capt. Dean Panos
Double D Charters
www.doubledcharters.com
(954)805-8231