Pacemaker Fishing Forum

Getting down to my mom's became a little bit of an escapade with major flight delays and a 3rd world country (Miami) car rental fiasco! But....once I crossed the Rickenbacker Causeway (about 1 AM) on to Key Biscayne, it was all getting better! Mom had told me that she was out of fish and wanted more so I just had to come down and oblige!

Day 1:

The plan was to meat fish a 1/2 day in the morning to fill my mom's freezer but a slug of cold water brought the bottom meat bite to a halt so Capt. Lee opted for an afternoon trip for kings and possibly cobia (and maybe some other species). We had to go way north to get to the target area.

We had a crew of 8 and off we went!





I knew it was going to be a great crew when one of then pulled out a Cuban sandwich!



It was a little sporty out there (3-6 footers and whitecaps) but the 46' Markely handled it just right.

We didn't do anything on the 1st drift....but the birds were coming by to visit.



Unfortunately, one of our guys was too slow on the draw and he caught him. The crew did a great job of rescuing the bird so he could fly again!



Then...time for action! Here is Allen bowed up with a nice king!



I was the king of Blue Runners!



Must have caught 10 of these (not really edible) before I finally caught a nice king.





These guys are little torpedoes!

We caught a few albies.....



.....and a nice remora which I was not able to photograph.

Allen's GF caught two kings and we dubbed her the "queen of kings"! She was just about healed from hand surgery and was talking about how nice it felt. Then, everyone gets hooked up....



....and she had a big one on so she gave her rod to Allen. Twenty minutes later, he was still fighting it. Most likely it was a shark and he eventually broke off.

Later, I heard on of the greatest lines ever. Someone said they saw some bait fish. When asked where, they said, "over there, by that braking wave". Remember, we are in 3-5 footers with lots of whitecaps!!

Here is my Drift Rod....





....which is much lighter that what they use on the boat. I had it made at Juno Tackle in Juno Beach. They always laugh at my Abu C4 but it has never let me known and I can crank up fish out of the deep as good as any of the heavier stuff!

We continued to catch many fish....including 5 keeper kings!



Towards the end of the trip, I got slammed and lost a lot of line. Once I started to regain line, we knew I had a big fish. Of course, I was hoping it was a cobia. After a long battle.....poof! The fish is gone. I reel up expecting to have been cut off (as I had 3-4 times by kings) but my rig was still intact except that the fish snapped the hook! That was not a happy feeling!

Always see some nice plastic out there!





So...while we did not get the normal smorgasbord of meat fish, we did have a blast catching kings, runners, sharks etc. Mom will have some vice cerrucho for a month or so!

Day2:

I met Mike and Capt. Mark at Crandon Park at 7 AM as we were going to try to do some salty bay fishing like we did back in November.



The weatherman was calling for some wind (10-15 w/ gusts of 20) but as usual, he was wrong. This time it was to our benefit. We never saw 15 and it was 8-12 most of the day! Temps of 75ish made it perfect!





It didn't take me long to take the skunk off with a porgy.



Then Mike got a grunt and a nice Jack.











It was steady fishing while the tide ran out.

Then Mike got slammed and schooled (and almost spooled) by a 10+ pound jack!





This guy did not want to come in and was putting the hurts on Mike. It was great to just sit back and watch the battle!



A well deserved smile!



Most of the fish that Mike caught were 1sts for him which made the day even better!

We made a couple of moves and continued to catch some fish including yellow tail snapper (came off in my hands as I tried to get a pic) hogfish, red grouper and mutton snapper.









Next up was to do some poling on the flats (Stiltsville)....





....to see if we could get a bonefish or two. While we did not see much, we did see several barracuda who got spooked when they saw us. One in particular came at us like a torpedo and came really close to us as he sped by. Amazing speed!

Although I had a boxfish hooked up (albeit just briefly), Mike landed a blowfish....



....the flats did not produce so we retraced our steps and hit a few of the places we caught at earlier. But the bite died down.

We were getting close to end of the trip so we went over to see if there were any tarpon at home. They were not there but I caught several jacks on a DOA mullet lure and the last fish of the day was a snook.



Once again, we caught lots of fish and lots of species (10). I know Mike will be talking about that big jack for a while as he came within a couple of turns of getting spooled. Capt. Mark reacted quickly and we chased that fish down before landing it.

Capt. Mark now has quite a following from our area. As I, many friends have fished with him in the past and fishing with him in the future. Two are coming down this weekend, and 2 more in the beginning of March. He is great to fish with and knows all the shallow (and deep) water in the greater Miami area.