Captain’s Corner for July 29 Dave Zalewski 397-8815

The Spanish mackerel have finally invaded the waters in the gulf of Mexico in our area. In past years the mackerel have produced daily activity from the shoreline to 20 miles offshore for the entire summer, making for fun filled charter trips combining trolling and bottom fishing. Two weeks ago we started spotting closely compacted bait balls consisting of juvenile Spanish sardines. These pods of bait could be found by observing terns and pelicans gorging themselves on the surface along with Spanish mackerel, bonita, and sharks attacking from underneath the surface. Now that the bait has arrived and established residence the mackerel are here until water temperatures drop to 70 degrees in the fall. Matching lure size for those trolling hardware to the size of the available bait is imperative. 00 spoons, small hard bodied plugs, and streamer flies trolled behind a #1 planer or small trolling lead will produce single and multiple hook ups.
Because of the west winds we have been experiencing that dirtied up the water, we have been targeting the near shore artificial reefs (4 to 7) miles offshore and the mid water reefs (10 to 12) miles offshore along with the edges of the shipping channel all the way out to the Whistler buoy. Anchoring and deploying a chum bag along with cutting small slivers of Spanish sardines will quickly draw these ravenous feeders close to the boat where they can be caught using a long shanked 1/0 gold hook and nose hooking a white bait or shrimp, casting small silver or gold plugs, or even with a fly rod and a small streamer. These methods provide more sport because of the lighter tackle that can be used.