Everyone needs some vacation time and it doesn’t get any more relaxing than here in the Keys.  Most of us that live here take our vacations at this time…in fact, you’ll see some local businesses close down for a month or so while those owners take their vacation!

People ask me all the time, “where do you go on vacation, Capt. Dave?”  It is really kind of funny, I tell them…it’s not far, and my couch has always treated me right.  But, serious now, I visit my some of my clients in Colorado, Michigan, Boston, etc.   My business is quite unique, I get to take people fishing which tends to be the highlight of their vacation.  Fishing with people creates a bond which I can’t describe, but it can be strong.  I get to meet all walks of life and to see the diversity of my clients really make me proud to be an American.

The lack of charters hasn’t kept me from fishing.  My friends have been coming down and catching yellowtail snapper, cubera snappers, mutton, and true reds.  I have been able to put my friends on some tuna, and grouper, too.  This time of the year the water starts to cool off and some fish move out as others move in.  The snapper bite on the reef has been great.  We are getting close to a fall run of dolphin, which I can’t wait for.  They are usually decent fish…not too many schoolies, mostly fish from 10-20 pounds.

I have been fishing on the deep reefs from 75-90 feet of water, and I’ve been catching big mangroves from 4-5 pounds if the sharks don’t eat them.  The yellowtails have been ranging from 1-3 pounds.  I have been fishing some new areas and getting yellowtail everywhere.  I have been using a leader rig for the mangroves and flat lining for the yellowtails.  Since the current has let up I have been using no weight for the yellowtail.

Every day is different: sometimes the fish will be close and sometimes far, but they are always there.  I have had to use large amounts of chum, but the payout is worth it.  Since the skippies have been thick, I have been using them a lot on the bottom and flat lining.  Tuna is exceptional bait, and I always keep plenty in the freezer.

There have been some talks about some sailfish being caught, but I haven’t fished for them because my clients and friends would rather catch something they can eat.  I believe that right now the reef has been the best area to fish as well as the hump for the tunas.  As the weather changes up north, the swordfish will be pouring through, too.  Talk about a lot of good eating meat!  Swordfish happens to be one of my favorites.

Plan B was to use the electric reel and drop on some spots for some snowys — and if we got lucky, a queen snapper. I have been getting a queeny every once in a while.

On the first drop we manged to get hooked up with something big. We were fishing in 800 feet of water and this fish didn’t want to budge a foot. It actually started to take line, so we figured it was a shark and cranked up the drag. Still this fish wouldn’t budge on our Tanacom 1000. After taking in a little line we finally got it off the bottom. We got it up almost 30 feet when he decided he wanted to go back to the bottom again.

After ten minutes of battling, we hadn’t gained any line. After about 20 minutes, we finally started to get this fish off the bottom. We worked hard and finally we we saw what was on our line. It was a monstrous snowy, with battle scars where it had been injured and healed. This was his last battle and we won. I would estimate this fish is around 50-60 pounds, which would have been a new world record…but we caught it on an electric and we all know that wouldn’t count.

On our next drop we caught a small 8-10 pound queen. One of my favorites, because not everyone knows how to catch them. Certain times of the year are better than others, but humps in deep water will hold large quantities of them from Sept-Jan. You just never know when they will show up. It was starting to get late and we wanted to catch a few tunas before heading home.

At the hump, we trolled all over the place and it seems that the tuna were having lock jaw, even in the late hours that we were fishing. The bite all week has been phenomenal, but they have to take a break sometimes and today seems to be the day. We did get a few, but not as many as we had hoped and the size was a little small compared to what we caught all week.

The jigging slowed down all week and still it was slow. We trolled to get the few we caught. We actually chased birds as far as two miles away from the hump to get the tunas we caught. We also caught one on the back side of the rip. While trolling around the hump we caught two gaffers, well one gaffer and a heavy lifter…and that seems to be all we did.

I started to fish with a half oz. of lead on my knocker rig and as the night progressed we ended up using a 1/8 oz. sinker.  I didn’t switch because of the slowing current, as a matter of fact the current picked up.  It is almost free lining, keeping the bait down but not on the bottom.  Every once in a while I will hold the line and the bait will rise up and then I feed it back, waiting for the bite.

Last year I cast-netted 180 quarts of sardines, which I am still using.  I saved the baits all year so that I would have them for the summer months of nighttime mangrove fishing.  Sardines are perfect bait for the snappers because of their size and the amount of oil in them.  They don’t stay on the hook real good but they are definitely preferred bait by the mangroves.

Each night we were able to capture a few other species other than mangroves.  Almost every night we have caught a legal red grouper and one night we caught a small cubera about 10 pounds and the other night we caught a few mutton snappers around 8 pounds.

The current has been good, in the west-bound direction.  It doesn’t take long for the bait to show up so don’t forget the cast net.  I will switch back and forth from the sardine to pilchard and I mainly chop up the pilchards into chunks and chum with them, but if you don’t have sardines they will work fine.

Good luck and keep only what you can use — conservation starts with us.

As the sun broke the horizon we all started to get a little giddy with anticipation. We stopped on four sets of birds until we finally found some dolphin that wanted to eat. They weren’t big but decent heavy lifters and schoolies.

After they shut down we were picking up our last fish when a slammer swam right behind the transom.  The crew sat there staring in shock and amazement as I pitched a live pilchard out to hook it up for my client Tom. Then Zack (who runs a boat at the boat house) pitched a bait out there and all of a sudden we got two big ones on. As we were fighting the fish, they ran together and then I saw a third fish where we pitched another rod out so now we had a triple-header! The fish weren’t huge but big enough to call large gaffers and one slammer. We boated all three fish and off we went further south on the hunt for the yellowfin. All this happened in 3200 feet about 42 miles out.

Yellowfins are a year-round fish in the Caribbean, but some months the larger migratory fish will push through. We caught eight 30-pound Yellowfins in Harbor Island last month and we figured if we got out far enough we might catch a few. We ended up not seeing any yellowfins, but the small blackfins were everywhere. Staying far enough away from land so not to enter Bahamian waters, we ran the radar picking up flock of birds, but each time it was 3-6 pound blackfins.

We did a little bottom dropping in some deep water and landed a few black snappers and yellow eyes, but there was very little current so I went to my Misty spot and on the first drop we landed a 30 pounder. Since you are only allowed one per boat we headed north checking the radar and finding small blackfins and skippy’s all the way back home. We did find some more dolphin but we had all the dolphin that we needed…so unless they were big we weren’t going to mess with them. I was thinking if we stayed in that area where we caught the dolphin this morning we might have landed a whole bunch of big ones. It was very alive from 40-50 miles out, lots of birds and fish.

Since it was close to a three hour run back to dock we put the blinders on and turned off the radar so not be sidetracked and headed home for an amazing dinner.

The bait was violently hit which then turned into a battle for my client Tom.  He fought this fish for nearly 45 minutes and then we caught a glimpse of what it was.  We thought it was a shark, but we were close, it was 15-foot sawfish, one of the rarest fish in the ocean.  This impressive fish is practically a dinosaur.  The saw like bill has one-inch teeth sticking out of it was almost six feet long.  The massive body measured four and half feet wide and it was as long as the transom of the boat with is 15 feet.  Very cool sighting, most people will never see one in the wild, and this is the second one we have caught in two years.

After sweating out gallon of water we decided to move and try some deep water for muttons and scamp grouper but we never hooked up.  We got a few bites but never connected to any of them.  There is a ledge out in 250 feet of water out there, and we marked fish all over it, but with no current the fish were not being cooperative.  After about two hours of no bites be decided to anchor back up on a yellowtail spot and stay there the night.  It was getting late and we caught a few more yellowtails and one large red grouper.  As the sun started to go down we started to cook dinner, which consisted of grouper on the grill, grilled asparagus, garlic pasta and some rum. You’ve got to have the rum.

The following day after breakfast we headed to the shallow banks on the inside edge of the Gulf and fished for red grouper.  It was like clockwork, dropping down dead gogs, and live grunts we were limited out in a couple of hours.  At this time we decided to head back to Key west for a fun filled Fourth of July.  Watching the fireworks from the boat while we ate bubba burgers, yellowtail ceviche and garlic pasta with a mozzarella, tomato salad.  After the fire works the boat next to us had a cannon, which they fired off and it was deafening.

After the Fourth, we headed to Cay Sal Banks, not getting too close because that would be illegal.  You have to check in before you can enter Bahamian waters.  There are areas where you can troll and deep drop where you are not actually in Bahamian waters.  You have to stay 12 miles outside any land.  Unfortunatly, there aren’t any places to check in over here, you would have to go 150 miles to check in, but the Cay Sal Bank is only 50-75 miles away in the opposite direction.  While we were over there we caught about fifty barracudas on the troll so we tried deep dropping in 1200 feet of water and caught 10 black snappers and one forty pound misty grouper.  After that we headed home which is over three hours from there.

With one day off, I had a guide trip with a great bunch of people — Mike, Jack, Max, Wyatt, and Spencer.  We had a goal to yellowtail fish, but with no current it was hard fishing.  After about three hours and two spots we decided to go mutton fishing.  It was a good thing that we did, because we caught five muttons and lost at least five others.  They guys had a great day and some excellent fish for dinner that night.  We fished a wreck in 180 feet of water and it was on — we got bites every drop with many double hookups.  The bite was on and if you are looking to catch some of these big mutton snappers this is the time to get down here.

Come on down! The weather is hot as the bite.  And to all of you who are worried about the oil, don’t be! There is no oil and there isn’t any likelihood of oil in out near future.  Listening to the news I found out that they might be able to cap it this weekend, keep your fingers crossed.  If the oil does make it to the Gulf Stream it will most likely pass by the Keys out as far as twenty miles, so if it does come this way the reef shouldn’t be harmed.  Of course we never know what the weather will do so we still got to keep our fingers crossed that they will be able to contain this spill before a hurricane around the corner scatters it all around.  Stay informed about what’s going on down here and keep my web site on your favorites.

Hope to see you down here! Come on down while the fishing is good!

Most of the fish have been congregating on the edge of the Gulf Stream and a few miles beyond.  Most of the fish are under birds, but when looking for fish, try and find as few birds together as possible. This will indicate dolphin instead of skippies.  My magic number is two to three birds for big fish, but five birds can be either schoolies or a bunch of big dolphin.  You just never know what going to be under a huge flock of birds either, but in most cases they are skippies.  If the skippies are small, you might find wahoo or marlin close by.  When I fished in Costa Rica, I learned to troll around the birds and not through them to raise billfish.  The billfish are looking for the few bait fish that get separated from the school, it seems that they can take them out easier one at a time than trying to slash into a ball of moving fish.  I learned that one on the discovery channel.

The tuna have been biting pretty good on the live bait. Jigs seem to catch a few 10 pounders, but if you’re looking for the big ones, you will need plenty of live pilchards.  Getting the pilchards hasn’t been hard if you venture out on the reef after dark.  Anchoring anywhere from 18-40 feet of water after dark you can enjoy the great mangrove bite and load up on pilchards for the following day to the hump.  If you anchor in 40 feet of water, the pilchards will be a little less dense, but the gogs are much thicker in this deeper water.  By using the bigger sabiki rigs you can keep more gogs on the line without as many coming off.  The sword fishing report was good, and my Buddy Capt. Brian caught a 350-pound mako with his clients.

You have to get out to the wrecks and catch some muttons! They are still biting ok. Many days I get six or so with all the amberjack action you could want.  The muttons have been averaging about 12 pounds, with some into the 25-pound class.  Live bait is where it’s been at. Pinfish, cigars, grunts, and crabs have all been producing well.  Dead bait which can work well when the fish are stacked up, it really hasn’t been working for lately, but I always keep throwing some dead baits down because sometimes they will get lazy and catching a live bait just seems like too much effort sometimes.  Split tailed baits or plugs will work, even strips of bonita are some of my favorite dead bottom baits.

I am headed to the Tortugas for a few days, and I will post again after I get back so check sometime after Tuesday.  Have a great “Fourth” and don’t forget that it is our military that we really need to thank so that we can go fishing.  Remember that here in Marathon you don’t have to drive home, call a cab and for a few bucks extra they will drive your car home for you.

The next day we went wreck fishing.  We caught five amberjacks and three muttons.  The muttons seem to biting from 140-180 feet of water.  They weren’t biting great but we did miss quite a few other fish, which could have been other muttons as well.  We tried heading offshore again for a few days only to catch a few schoolies, which were legal to harvest.  The bite at the hump was slow, too; lack of current seemed to have hindered all the fishing.

I went yellow tailing only to have the lack of current hinder that as well.  So we went mutton fishing and caught a few muttons from 15-20 pounds.  We also got our fair share of amberjacks too.  While we were yellow tailing I dropped some pinfish to the bottom.  The bottom bite was active.  We caught two goliaths from 30-70 pounds, a Nassau grouper weighing in at 25 pounds and plenty of five-pound mangrove snappers.

Towards the end of the week I heard of a few big fish being caught or seen, but not much.  The large schoolies have been numerous east of the Marathon Hump from 1100-1300 feet of water.  Basically all you wanted if you wanted to travel that far to the east.  Most of the fish have been reported from Holiday Isle to Caloosa Cove.

The mangrove spawn is just starting, so get out of the heat and fish at night from 25-70 feet of water.  Lots of bait out on the reef too, so you might want to bring your cast net or sabiki rigs.

The following day we went out of Chub Cay and ran to east end of the Berry Islands and trolled for a few hours.  Not much there either so we decided to make the final run to Harbor Island.  On the way there we encountered some birds, but not much.  We trolled around and through the birds and caught a small yellowfin tuna.  Since it was getting late we needed to check in to our slip before the dock master went home for the evening.  That evening we jumped on the golf cart and drove around till we came across Ma Ruby’s, an incredible little joint with excellent food.  I had a conch burger that was out of this world; everyone else ordered their cheeseburger in paradise, which was recommended by Jimmy Buffet.  Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, the rum seems to flow from the faucets here.  It seems that happy hour starts when you hit the dock and it doesn’t end till bedtime.

The following day we had a slow start due to the empty beer cans all over the deck and few empty rum bottles on the live well.  After getting some fresh coffee in our systems we geared up for the unexpected.  I have never been to Harbor Island before but after spending a little over a week there I highly recommend it.  Heading south to get out of the cut we encountered some big swells in the cut.  Some of which were fifteen feet or better.  Once out of the cut, it was a short ride, which seem like forever to James Point.  This point sticks out five miles from the edge of the beach and sticks out into the current.  3,000-4,000 feet on one side, 50 feet of water on top and 3,000-4,000 feet on the other side.  Harbor Island has five points like all within range of a day trip.

The first couple of days the seas were angry, ten to twelve footers with a fifteen-foot ground swell.  It was still very fishable though.  Being that it is at the edge of the North Atlantic, the ground swells were neat to fish in.  Once the wind subsided the seas were flat with 15-20 foot ground swells, and again that was really neat to see, kind of reminds me of the rolling hills of Kentucky.   The first couple of days we caught some big dolphin averaging from 25-40 pounds.  We actually had a blue come up and seize up one of the dolphin we were reeling in.  It was a little big for the blue to eat and he refused to eat any of our pitch baits we put back for him.

We went out a couple of other days and got some barracudas and one white marlin weighing in at 90 pounds.  That was impressive to watch unfold from the tower.  The water temp kept rising and it seemed to drive away the marlins.  Even the dolphin were absent, but we did catch eight yellowfin tunas one afternoon live baiting off of one of those points.  We kept trolling for marlin but had no luck, that how it goes sometimes, even in the Bahamas.   On one of our last days fishing we sucked in an injector, which destroyed our turbo.  We had to limp home, which took 41 hours of driving.  We did stop and make two legs out of it.  Be held up over night at the Berry islands and then the following morning we trolled all along the Berry’s catching some more yellowfin tuna and blackfins.  Once we got home, I started back fishing on Sweet E’Nuf. Boy what a change.

Much more information about the charters we offer over on the charters page.

And be sure to check out the 65(!) new pictures in the photo gallery.  Don’t see a picture from your trip? Send it to us!

While you’re out offshore, you might as well drop a few times for some snowys and other bottom fish.  The bite has been great, but I wouldn’t know personally…I have been stuck on the reef catching my share of the yellowtails and groupers.  The spots I have been fishing range from 75-98 feet of water.  Finding a good big yellowtail spot isn’t hard to do right now…it’s their time to do the wild thing so they are very aggressive and hungry.  I have been fishing this one spot where three bull sharks have taken up residence and occasionally a hammerhead or a tiger shark will show up to get their fill of these yellow delights.

The grouper bite has been great ever since it opened back up on May 1^st.  Hitting the wrecks and fishing the reef has produced a bunch of nice black groupers from 15-30 pounds.  I have landed many goliaths from 30-150 pounds this week.  We hooked many fish that I didn’t even slow down.  I use a simple leader rig with 80-pound main line with 100-pound leader.  Even with the drag locked down, I still can’t stop some of the fish before they get into the structure.  I am thinking about going up in test, there are some slobby groupers out there.  I am still looking to beat my 63-pound black grouper I got a few years back…one of these days, I can feel it!  To fish for these dinosaurs, I like to use large yellowtails, up to 2 pounds, and grunts bigger than your hand.  Even small-but-legal grouper can eat either of these baits; they have a voracious appetite and a mouth to match.

The swordfish bite was red hot, from what I heard from the boys.  Summer time isn’t the best time to get a lunker, but there are lots of them out there.  Even though you still might get lucky and get a 500 pounder, most of the big fish are on their way back up to the North, where they’ll be harvested by long liners up off of New York and Boston.  Strip baits still seem to be the best baits along with squid.  When you use squid you can sometimes end up with an oilfish, escolar, or even a pompfret.  You just never know what you’re going to get when you drop a bait down 2,000 feet.

Good luck, and make sure you got all of your paper work onboard. Law Enforcement has been out in full force, especially if you are diving…those dive flags seem to attract them.  Make sure you are abiding by all the new laws, or it could cost you.