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.

The reef at night has been great, many big mangroves, muttons, and some jumbo yellowtail.  As well in the daytime, yellowtails have been chewing, but fishing them in the fast current was a little challenging.  The patches yielded small yellowtail, but big enough to keep and make a meal.  Fishing the wrecks has produced a few good fish, but since the spawns are over for the most part, mutton fishing here in Marathon has slowed down.  Don’t get me wrong; there are a few nice fish to be had on any given day.

Offshore is where I finished these past couple of days, and the Tuna bite has been decent late in the afternoon.  It was good during most of the day on Thursday, but with people operating their boat like morons, I had to slow down, and in some cases I had to just pick my baits up and move from the area.  I actually had a guy troll over top of me on the hump.  His bait came flying over the gunwale, smacking my center consol before making a hasty exit.  Thank god my clients were back at the stern reeling in fish. I mean, we were stopped fighting fish and somehow this guy came that close to literally troll through my boat.

On Wednesday, I fished a half-day snapper in the morning and then left for a full day from 1:00pm to 9:00 pm.  The afternoon full day can only happen in the summer, we had just enough light to fish the whole time and then came home in the dark.    We caught some nice dolphin and tuna…well, we saw two dolphin and caught them, and then fished the hump where large fish were actually eating trolled baits.  Trolled ballyhoo or cedar plugs did the trick that day.

After all the fishing, it is always nice to sit down and eat a nice meal.   After a day of fishing, some sushi and oysters sounds good to me.  I ordered some Oysters Moscow from Castaways, which is a raw oyster with two types of caviar and horseradish sauce on it.  Very good, it gives it another step up from just a great oyster.  The flavor just pops in your mouth.

I also ordered two of their special sushi rolls, a 2-year roll, and a surf and turf roll.  The 2-year roll has chopped tuna on top, with an inside-out roll of shrimp tempura and asparagus, cream cheese, and something else I can’t remember.  The surf and turf roll has prime rib on top with lobster tempura and some other ingredients too.

Let me tell you one thing though, the custom champagne hand rolls are off the hook.  My favorite is the salmon, tuna, white tuna, with Japanese mayo, massago, and a quails egg yolk.  Yummmmmm that’s some good eating.

Hungry yet?

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.

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.

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.

If you’re heading offshore, the dolphin aren’t thick by any means…but if you put your time in you can make a pretty good day of it.  Most of the fish have been from 12 miles out to the edge of the continental shelf.  Almost all the fish have been under birds, with a few exceptions of some extraordinary floaters.  My buddy John Foster found a boat with two motors floating, but half sunk with a school of wahoo on it.  The only problem was that the wahoos weren’t the top predator in this little floating ecosystem.  They were only able to get three whole 20 pounders and four halves.  There must have been a shark or two lingering around.  The tuna bite picked back up after its short break.  Using live bait seems to be the key now…the tunas are not hitting the jigs as well as they have been, but you still are able to get a few.  Using live bait, the tunas were averaging 20-25 pounds with your occasional smaller ones too.

The deep dropping has been phenomenal! From snowys to queen snappers, to tiles and barrelfish, the current has been perfect for this fishing.  We need some current, but too much or you can’t hold bottom. Right now, its perfect with a knot and half drift slightly northeast.  A few people that I have talked with tell me that that the deep dropping has been as good as it gets.  With the new laws you need to be careful of what you catch because you can only have three groupers on the boat now.  This would include tilefish in your aggregate limits.  So that would mean two snowys and only tilefish, but we can live with a decrease bag limit.  From what I heard coming down the coconut telegraph, they intend to shut it all down…so get what you can while it is still legal.

The reef is on fire! The yellow brick road has formed behind many boats, and many people are reporting the start of a great yellowtail season.  We do catch yellowtails all year round, but it really is in the summer when the yellowtails school in great numbers.  Since they’re competing for the food, they become very aggressive and easier to catch.  We caught a few this week in the 5-pound range, which is an absolute monster when it comes to yellowtail.  There have been a few muttons around, but now that grouper is in season, we have been concentrating on them instead.  Remember, elephants eat peanuts…but to weed out small fish you must use larger baits.

Good luck and I will see you out there!

I have been all over the pace this week.  I fished the deep, the shallow and all the places in between.  In the beginning of the week we went out for tunas at the hump and did very well.  Most of the tunas were perfect size, not too small to eat and not too big where the meat gets really red.  I prefer the 10-20 pounders…they have pinkish meat and I believe it is the best tasting.  We filled the cooler with all the tuna my clients could eat and then we took a short ride to the west to fish for queen snapper.  We caught tilefish, and queen snappers — good size to them as well.  The fish have been averaging 12 pounds, but we have been getting a few close to 20 pounds.

The next charter this past week was a guide trip.  A guide trip is when I jump on my clients boat and I give hands on training of the rigs, bait, and the area.  If anyone is interested in this please give me a call…I would love to help you out!  My client Dave wanted to learn about the reef so we went yellow tailing.  It took a while for the yellowtails to pop up, but once they did we caught a few before they got spooked off buy the numerous kings and mackerel…or maybe it was the current (or lack of).  We tried every trick in the book and they still wouldn’t bite.  So I move to another spot out in 88 feet of water.

We marked a nice school, but I hadn’t been in this spot for quite some time now, so who knew that we would get into some great mangrove action?  Most of them were 3-4 pounds, but none smaller than 2 pounds.  After the bite died off, we switched to a jig, and whipped-jigged kings and mackerel on 8-pound test line.  What a blast that was!  All throughout the day we were catching grouper on the bottom with a small 1’4 oz jig tipped with a small pinfish.  We were targeting muttons, but only caught groupers and mangroves.   We probably caught 20 groupers (gags, reds, and blacks) and half of them were keepers, which we released unharmed to get a little bigger.  I can’t wait till the grouper season opens, it’s killing me to release such quality fish, but the law is the law.

My next charter was another guide trip and we did our tuna thing for while when we finally caught some small ones, which we bridled up on two Tiagra 50 wides with 80-pound test.  My client wanted to troll live tuna around the hump, so we did.  We didn’t get any strikes but the anticipation of what might eat our baits really got our blood flowing.  One of these days we will get a big marlin or maybe a mako.  While we trolled around trying to get the smaller tunas we picked up one dolphin, which was a bonus.  After a few hours with no strikes we went deep dropping and we caught a 60-pound wreckfish, rosefish, and a barrelfish.  Unfortunately we were unable to keep the wreckfish due to its “no take” status.  They are commercially taken but recreational anglers are not allowed to posses this fish.

On Sunday we headed out o look for yellowfin tuna, but we couldn’t find any.  It was a desert out there, no dolphin and no yellowfins.  We did manage to catch a sailfish on a squid spreader bar.  We looked all over for birds but to no avail.  I was using an open array radar to search for the birds, but we only found a few and they were just flying.

Good luck and keep it safe.

Thanks to the East wind, the sails were piling down the pipeline and boats with upper stations had a ball sight fishing for those acrobatic speedsters. Even though they were being finicky, there were many sailfish to be had. With the ballyhoo hard to find, the choice of bait here in Marathon has been pilchards, which really is a better bait for sight fishing. I like to hook the bait in the belly to force the pilchard down which usually entices the sailfish to strike.

There has been an incredible color edge off of Marathon all week with lots of sailfish action on it. The bite had been better the further West you went. Some boats fished all the way down to American shoals (what a hike!), but in order to put up big numbers of fish that’s where you needed to be. Along with the sails, cobia and dolphin are also being caught along that edge.

The deeper edge further offshore that had the dolphin last week dried right up as if it was never there. I would keep looking for dolphin just beyond the color change and out as far as 400 feet just in case there is another push of fish this week.

The wrecks have been hit hard for the past few weeks and the fishing pressure has made a definite impact on the bite, which was out of this world. The wrecks are still producing amberjacks, muttons, and beautiful grouper, which we have been releasing. I caught a small genuine red snapper, which is not common in these parts except for a few deeper wrecks during certain times of the year.

The bait of choice on the mutton snapper bite has been live pinfish and any small grunts, which I was able to catch. The tomtates, my favorite bait has been hard to come by, but pinfish seem to be doing the job just fine.

Kingfish have been on most of the deeper wrecks from 130-200 feet of water. I was mainly catching them with deep-trolled ballyhoo. I heard that the reef also had kingfish prowling behind the yellowtails. When fishing for yellow tails, the kings will be hanging back waiting for the right time to strike.

The hump has been red hot. The tunas have been biting better in the afternoon verses the morning, but that may be due to the full moon we have had and the tunas must be feasting on the squid all night long. Jigging for the tunas has resulted in more and bigger fish, but when it becomes overcast the larger tunas will hit the trolled baits too.

The live baiter out there have been harassed by all the boat traffic out there, so if you see a boat using live bait, give him some room and respect that he can’t catch his fish when boats come barreling up behind them. While we were out offshore we did a little deep dropping and yielded some quality queen snappers. Most of the queens were up in the 12-18 pound class, which is some quality fish. Snowys and tilefish are abundant right now too in the 800-700 foot range.

I had a charter which took me out in the bay. I normally don’t fish out here but when the weather gets rough and my clients can’t take the big seas we head out there for some action packed fishing. They wanted to catch some goliaths and the bay didn’t let us down. We caught a couple in the 30 pound class and two big ones one was about 100 pounds and the other had to 350 pounds if it wasn’t 400 pounds. Most of the mackerel have left the bay but we did manage to get a dozen or so.

The bluefish on the other hand have been ransacking our baits in packs of 20-50 fish strong. It is pretty cool to se 20 or so fish following the one you have hooked. When this happens I like to throw some cut chunks right behind the hooked fish to get them really fired up before I pitch a spoon or a jig with a ballyhoo on it to get multiple hookups. We had out a shark bait for most of the day but we only had a couple of small ones short strike the bait.

Have a great week and I will see you out there. For those of you who haven’t signed the petition please sign it, we need everyone in on this one. Lets take back our rights to fish here come sign this petition!