Captain’s Corner for August 24 Dave Zalewski 397-8815

What’s hot: The weather would come in first place with offshore fishing coming in a close second. Spanish mackerel fishing has been as good as it gets for several weeks on all of the artificial reefs located 5 to 7 miles offshore. The baitfish on these reefs remains small, so the use of 0 and 00 spoons or small streamer flies pulled behind a #1 planer or small trolling sinker is the key to almost uninterrupted action from these spotted speedsters. Barracudas have finally made a strong appearance on these reefs and it makes the day of a young angler to reel in a half of a mackerel. Blue runners are available and slow trolling one on a stinger rig will often result in a strike from these acrobatic hard fighting fish.
Bottom fishing for red grouper, white grunts, mangrove snapper and triggerfish remains exceptional in the 70 to 90 foot depths. Targeting the transitional area where the sand bottom joins the swiss cheese limestone is the key to putting keepers in the box. Try different baits such as frozen sardines, squid, cut grunts, pinfish and squirrelfish until the correct bait for the day is determined. Lately we have found that the bait used one day with success will not produce well the next day when fishing the same area.
Last Friday we experienced a better than usual day with the pelagic fish. We started with Spanish mackerel and barracuda on the artificial reefs, then traveled to the 75 foot depths west of John’s Pass for some bottom fishing. Deploying a stinger rigged flat line with a frozen sardine produced a mid 20 pound kingfish. Shortly after that the drag started screaming and we all thought another king until we saw the sailfish tail walking across the surface. After a 45 minute battle on spinning tackle Bud Hunt landed and released this beautiful specimen.
Tip: Always deploy a flatline while bottom fishing