World Class Sailfish Action Continues

Report Date: February 8, 2004

Fishing is always an interesting challenge. Yesterday morning started like a lot days in the charter fishing business. Up at 4:30 AM, check the weather on the computer, as predicted the dreaded WEST wind at 25 knots, the computer radar indicated a line of showers moving our way (should be here by mid-morning) and a SMALL CRAFT WARNING from NOAA. Another day in paradise! When the WEST wind blows it is almost predicable that the fishing is going to be a challenge.

Upon arriving at the dock it was obvious that the wind was from the WEST but it was only blowing 15 to 20. I talked with the folks who were fishing with us and it was obvious they wanted to give it a try regardless of the weather. My initial plan was to catch some Spanish Mackerel and fish along the beach where we would be protected from the wind.

As we went through the inlet live bait was just offshore of the inlet buoy. I decided to put a few baits in the live well just in case we decided to move offshore and give the Sails and Dolphin a try. After catching live bait it appeared the wind was not nearly as brisk as predicted so we decided to give Sailfishing a try. We started fishing in about 50? of water off the Loran Tower where I had seen several fish and lots of bait a couple of days earlier. The bait was everywhere and we managed to catch a bunch of Bonitos, see one Sailfish but not the results we were hoping to achieve. We worked several other areas that had been holding Sailfish recently without any results. During the course of the morning I had only heard a couple of reports of a Sailfish being caught ?as I like to say ?random fish?.

Sailfish being released

I decided to move back inshore to the area where we caught bait earlier in the day. As we got closer I could see there were a couple of boats working the area and they reported they had caught a Sailfish and had seen a couple more. We got out our spread and immediately the King Mackerel attacked every bait. After putting new leaders and hooks on all of our lines I moved inshore slightly in hopes of getting away from the King bite. Within just a few minutes we had several Sailfish behind the boat and we managed to hook up a triple header. My anglers did a great job and before long we released the first fish, backed up to the second fish and after what seemed like a long and difficult struggle released him. We then focused our efforts on the third fish. By this time he was two to three hundred yards away from the boat so we gradually worked the boat back to the fish and were able to release him as well. The balance of our day was spent catching some very cooperative Sailfish in a fleet of boats that grew from just a couple of boats to a fleet of at least 40. It is always exciting to fish in an area where you almost constantly see someone hooked up on a fish and you know your turn is going to happen at any moment. For a day that started on an ominous note it wound up as a great day of catching Sailfish in Stuart Florida ?The Sailfish Capital of the World?. Hopefully the Sailfish season will go for a few more weeks and we will have some more days with this kind of exciting action.

Good luck and remember you can?t catch?em at the dock.

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