Baby Mahi Fun

Today was a great day to go fishing for mahi. We stopped by 8A reef to get a kingfish or 2, after a half hour, and catching what we thought might be skipjack tuna, we headed further out to the cones.



Finding a piece of floating bamboo, we starting casting some gulp minnows. Something shot 3 feet out of the water, and BAM! Reeled in a baby mahi.

Squish, Oops

After catching 4 of these miniatures, we trolled the cones for an hour or 2 with no luck. Headed down to Pelican Flats for the first time, and found 1 kingfish. Lesson learned, don't try to lift a 10 lb. kingfish by the leader, with a snap-swivel. Game over, fish took a nice rapala lure with it. Oh, and the tuna? Yup, just a bonito.

King of 8A

Pretty rough day at the 8A reef today. Was supposed to be 1 to 2 foot, was actually 3-4 with a heavy chop. I was really looking forward to go 25 miles out to try and get the elusive mahi, but not today. Did pretty good on the kings, we caught 3 and kept 2, the biggest was 35", 10 lbs. Trolling diving plugs again, with no hits on the ballyhoo. Was probably too choppy for a good surface bite, we should've just used plugs all day for this. I want to go bottom fishing, but today wasn't a good day to anchor.

Homey with his eyes on fresh sushi.

Catch of the day

Huntin' for Reds

On the hunt for reds, still haven't gotten one all year. Same tactics as last year, early morning fishing, hitting known redfish spots near Grant and Sebastian. Mostly using live shrimp on jigs and freeline, with 8 to 10 lb mono test with 15 lb fluor. Trying some of the gulp 5" jerk shad in chartreuse and white with a jig, gold spoons, D.O.A shrimp, no luck. I usually target reds first thing, between 6:30 and 9:30, water temperature has been pretty darn warm even then, at least 81. Next time I go for reds, i'll be targeting some deeper water near the flats, maybe they're keeping cool here.

Oh, here's my brother Brian catching a slimy sailcat. We both caught one on the day, quite a fight on 8 lb test, bit of a let down when we got them to the boat though.