Captain Ronnie put his customers on a big juicy 42lb smoker king mackerel.
We had a text book July with all the usual suspects hanging out in all the usual spots. Inside of 10 miles we had our king mackerel, sharks, tarpon and goliath grouper holding in the bait for some species and along structure for others. The main reefs were great for live bait trolling up the Summer saving king mackerels, and on occasion, it would give up a nice cobia, mahi, sailfish or black fin tuna. Other than the 4 day red snapper, a few amberjack and a 2 day mangrove bite the bottom fishing was pretty much dead like it almost always is in the summer. Blue water trolling was pretty terrible because of all of the scattered grass and overall low volume of fish. We never did take any trips or hear of anyone doing any trips to the other side of the stream so……
NEARSHORE
Tropical storm Isaias will have the water clarity wrecked for any hopes of live bait trolling the beach for kings and the occasional cobia, so unless we have no more storm activity for the next month, you will have to wait another year for that awesome fishery. August is a great month for Tarpon. Live pogies drifted back over the shoal will be a sure bet for anyone wanting to have a blast trying to tame these awesome fish. Finding the live bait might be a challenge, but once you have the bait it is just a numbers game from there on out. 50lb fluro leader with a 5/0 circle hook free lined back is all you need. You will have some bluefish and sharks to weed through but eventually that tarpon will find you. Goliath grouper are another awesome fish we have in August that are perfect targets for anglers who just want to see if they have what it takes to tame the beast. Use any giant live or dead bait along any structure inside of 10 miles and you have a great chance at goliath grouper.
OFFSHORE
The first big swells after the calm summer are upon us and that changes everything. The first handful of calm days will be all about finding color changes and hard edges. Bare with me while I explain what happens. Summertime live bait trolling is great, almost always good action with a lot of king mackerel and the occasional cobia, mahi, sailfish etc. These cobia and mahi are very spread out because of the abundance of bait that is spread out. Once we lose our water clarity, the bait will stack on any color change, even if this is dirty water going to slightly cleaner water or slightly clean water to really clean water. This also gives clear distinction on where you will find certain species. For example, cobia don’t mind dirty water and mahi will only be in clean blue water.
We have a very good chance at some great cobia fishing because several were being caught daily at the end of July. The big swells from the storm will create a color change that will allow those specifically wanting to target cobia a way to narrow their search and most likely result in some nice fish being caught. Same thing goes for mahi fishing.
The past month we have had some scattered fish around but specifically targeting them was poor because the search grid was too broad. Nice color change where Gulf Stream water meets dirty water will make for some good mahi fishing if the sea weed isn’t so scattered and thick that you can’t fish. The amount of seaweed the last couple years has been a problem when it comes to any style of trolling, I have even seen it so bad that I couldn’t deep drop fish because the amount of grass piling up on the line made it where you couldn’t see the bite or hold bottom. The bottom fishing absolutely needed to be turned on its head and shaken up.
The bottom bite will continue to be poor for the first part of the month with the exception of amberjack fishing. Once everything settles for a week without any big swells, we can expect to see a decent bottom bite. The mangroves, muttons, lanes, triggerfish and groupers should start to feed aggressively giving bottom fisherman a good chance at some fish for the freezer. We look forward to some great fishing this month.
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