Winter season is underway

I am done with the winter sailfish charters I had out of Palm Beach. And hunting season is winding down. The time not spent in Florida and the woods. Has been spent in the very windy and not so fishing friendly winter in Venice getting Relentless ready for our winter big tuna and wahoo season. I have also spent considerable time in getting the daytime swordfish dialed in and will offer daytime sword trips this summer as well. Now that all required boat work is done we are itching to get out there and hit the usual winter time spots. It’s looking as it will be a good Febuarary as the yellows are on both of the humps we generaly fish in the winter. Although they are around the wahoo have taken the stage for right now with some very good fishing for them. Speaking of the wahoo I have been working closely with Eagle Claw to come up with the ultimate replacement hook for the plugs that we use for them. I should be getting the prototype hooks in a few days. Depending on the number they send me. If you shoot me a email I will try and get a few handed out for people to try. We will need good feedback before the final production run comes out. They should fix a lot of the 1 or 2 for a bunch of bite days. And allow you to increase the fish caught to bite average. I will be updating my website on a weekly basis and you can also go to the VideoFishingReports channel on YouTube for a weekly video update. Until then catch’em up a d if you ready to go fishing so are we. Capt. Mike

Venice winter recap

With the winter season that was not the typical winter season starting to wind down. Well I say winding down it never really got started to wind down. There were a few flurries of big fish and some scattered ones to be had. The best way this winter season could be described as, fun fishing. Plenty of small yellowfin were to be had to make up for the lack of there older bigger brothers and sisters. My last group put it perfectly with the quote; I have never bass fished for yellowfin tuna before. Pretty much all winter I shifted gears and went with what mother ocean had decided to throw our way. I made some adjustments in tackle and lures and pretty much fished for the tuna the same way you would fish for largemouth bass chasing shad. It definitely made things fun since it was hands on. When a fish was lost there was no accusing looks. It was man I should have waited to set the hook or I knew I should have sped the retrieve up. The lighter tackle was just much more fun to use. Some days we could have caught a few more fish by using more standard methods and did so. But quickly switched back due to the fun factor which is what it’s about anyway. My trip with Matt Paulk brought the fun factor into things. We went on a big fish search that was not to be. With the onslaught of kings and sharks that day. We switched over to topwater lures and jigs and fished for the fun of it. Suddenly even kingfish became fun instead of just a nusicence. When they are in the 20-45lb class it’s a fun fish. It makes a perfect target for throwing topwaters at. After that trip I fished my next seven or eight trips the same way. Well except no kingfish we just made more runs to the floaters and beat up on the smaller yellowfin and on most days had no problem with getting a nice box of the smaller yellowfin and a few blackfin along with tons of released blackfin I told you I switched out my tackle to better accommodate the smaller fish. I went with 30-50lb braid on Quantum Cabo 50’s. On 20-30lb. spinning rods. Never once were we undergunned or felt at a disadvantage with the light line and tackle. I do have a shameless plug for some gear that I got to use while filming an episode of Addictive Fishing with Blair Wiggins. We used Blair’s line of rods and reels from Wright McGill. The rods were powerful light and had great action. I was very impressed with them. So much that I went to ****’s to try and pick a couple up. The jigging tackle was pretty standard with 300 gram rods and 160-270 gram flutter jigs color didn’t make a difference. But they kept the fish coming in when the yellows went down. Also on thing that helped the catch is a lure I discovered last year before the spill. It perfectly matches the hatch right now. The lure is a Japanese import from Tackle House and it’s called a Flitz it’s pretty small but can still be cast a mile with traditional topwater rods with heavier braid. The other lure is the new Shimano Waxwing and a DOA swimming mullet lure they really seemed to like those three the best. Now that the cold weather should be behind us the tuna should fall into hopefully an early summer pattern. We have had a springtime pattern for about two months. The one real exciting thing is that the tinker mackerel have stared to show. They are a little to small to fish right now but at least they are here. It shouldn’t be long until they become the goto bait. Capt. Mike

NO OIL REPORT

   This report is a glimpse into the life of every charter  fisherman in Venice right now. This story started out as a simple run down to Venice to do some routine maintenance on the boat. It turned out  that I would not get home until eight days later. Once I arrived at Cypress Cove it looked like someone had kicked an anthill. There were satellite trucks all over and media crews from all over the world were running around with cameras and microphones wanting a story. Well we gave them a story but it has now come back to bite us in the ass. We were all scared of what could happen if they closed our fishery. How would we pay our house and boat notes and feed our family and send our children to school. So unfortunately we gave them the story they wanted. With the threat of not having a source of income coming we all started running media trips to take them to see oil boom and different rookeries. Meanwhile as the stories started to hit the TV paper and newspapers around the world. The phone calls started to come in not to book charters but to cancel. Some of my cancellations were all the way into August. The story was the same thing we are not coming because of the oil, we can’t eat the fish,fishery is closed and any number of other oil related excuses.

   With the oil not hitting the beaches the media started to get antsy and started to get real pushy wanting the story of doom and gloom. Which simply wasn’t there all I managed to find was a little light sheen on the surface. Now after several days of this it started to get kind of old and stressfull being at the center of this with no information. It was time to go fishing. The 20-30 knot winds that had been hammering Venice finaly let up and dropped and we had mirror calm conditions. Perfect right, NO the clients I had canceled out. So here I am stressed out and perfect weather and no clients. A couple of other charter operations got out a put a whipping on the tuna. So the scramble was on to call some of my regular customers to come and get in on the great tuna fishing. I only had to make a couple of phone calls. Before Jared and his brother Schawn and Bret from Texas said were on the way. I rounded up Scott a hunting buddy from Mississippi to finish off our crew.

    I don’t think I have ever been more excited the day before a trip than I was this time. I iced the boat heavier than normal in anticipation of the slaughter that was to come. I went over everything. Then the ultimate oh s_ _ t I have no tackle down here. Remember this started out as a simple routine maintenance trip. But I was able to borrow some gear then I spent more time going over it and changing line and tying new leaders and hooks. With Scott’s help and a special guest appearance by the captain himself, Captain Morgan the rod work was done before the alarm clock went off.

    Finaly here is the story I have been building up to. Arrived at the marina and loaded the rods and the crew.  The conditions could not have been better. [img]http://www.forumpictureprocessor.com/pictureprocessor/images/DSC04660_1.jpg[/img]

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           There was no horizon the surface just melted into the sky. We were on the lookout for oil slicks so the livewell pickups could be shut down but we never ran over a drop of oil.  We ran across several weedlins loaded with chicken dolphin. We didn’t bother to stop to pick any up since we had a date with the yellowfin. Once we got to the first rig the tuna were going nuts on the surface maybe they were jumping out of the water to escape the oil they heard was all over the gulf. We quickly made bait and pulled off to try our luck with them. After several perfect shots at them with poppers the livebaits went out and the first fish of the day was soon in the box. This was Schawn’s first yellowfin ever so the trip was a success. [img]http://www.forumpictureprocessor.com/pictureprocessor/images/IMG_1340_4.jpg[/img]

         

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With the fish being very picky there we picked up and made an18 mile run to the southeast where we quickly picked up two right off the bat on live baits. [img]http://www.forumpictureprocessor.com/pictureprocessor/images/me%20&%20sean.jpg[/img]

           Then the key to the fish was found and we put it to good use. The only problem was we had to make more bait since we used exactly what they wanted up. Back to bait fishing: Luckily this rig had the absolute most perfect red tail scad on it. Here is a shot to show you how thick they were.

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This rig would be our final stop the yellows were marking real thick on the sounder and the lack of man-o-war jellies and the small bait under them were no where to be seen. I forgot to mention it but this rig is about 15 NM from where the Horizon was anchored. The first fish came as I was letting it out and the second fish hit as I was putting it in the rigger. With them biting like that I didn’t even bother putting them in the riggers. We just fished them on flat lines. Before we knew it we had 13 yellow fin in the 35-60lb range in the box around 3PM so with 80 miles to the dock we cleaned up and headed north. The best part was when I had Scott throw the rest of the bait overboard it all ran under the boat and when we took off they had nowhere to hide and the tuna went nuts destroying them on the surface. On the way in we ran across another group of animals that didn’t know they should not be here because of the oil and it was a pod of whales. Not what you would expect in an oil polluted gulf. The amount of life right now offshore is amazing. Every rig we checked had yellow fin and there were open water schools of tuna from well offshore all the way to the pass. Every charter that has managed to put trips together has been able to box at least 10 yellow fin a trip. So people PLEASE DON’T CANCEL YOUR TRIPS YOU TRUSTED ME AND THE OTHER CAPTAINS YOU BOOKED SO CALL AND TRUST OUR JUDGEMENT NOW BEFORE YOU JUST CANCEL.

Capt. Mike

 

 

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