FishFighter92
05-21-2012, 06:05 PM
Well, the winds shifted and started coming out of the East for a couple days and now are turning back West. We got the opportunity to go out last Wednesday after the winds were blowing hard the whole weekend.
We ended up leaving the dock 30 minutes later than we were planning to, so we just stopped and bought bait around 6:30 and then turned on the twin 300s, and let her run. The plan for the day was to troll around the nipple and weed lines for wahoo, and dolphin with maybe a shot at a sail or a bill fish. As we were headed out we passed some pretty thick patches of weeds but decided that we weren't going to stop til we were a good 40ish miles off, and we could stop at these patches on the way back. As we got farther and farther offshore the weeds really started to scatter, and we could not find a distinct line of weeds. We found a nice little rip and put out four lines behind the boat, two skirted ballyhoos and 2 yozuri bonita lures. We trolled around the rip and found others about 40-46 miles off around the nipple, and after about 45 minutes of trolling the penn international 50 with the orange striped bonita (or as I like to call it, the "Tiger") just took off. This fish was peeling drag like no other! As I finally got its head turned around, it didn't take long to get him too the boat, the first gaff missed but the second sunk right in and a 30-40ish pound wahoo was brought into the boat!
We set the lines back out hoping for another strike, but after a couple hours we stopped trolling and went to deep drop for some AJ's since we had my brothers girlfriend on board who had never been off-shore before. We found 3 consecutive patches of weeds, and put out a cigar minnow and let it sink, before you know it a chicken Mahi, and its friend had come up to grab it! But nothing that was of size at all.
We started trolling again around 1-2 o'clock and had no strikes for about an hour and a half so we decided to pack it up and try to catch some grouper really fast and then head in, we went out to the "super secret spot" and couldn't get a bait past the Snapper which was a huge bummer, those things are EVERYWHERE. We had to of caught and released about 20 of them before the day was over.
After getting worn out by the snapper we decided to call it a day and run in. As we were running in we saw a group of birds diving around some weedlines and decided to check it out! We put back out the yozuri tiger and trolled around the weeds and just like that another wahoo hit, this time a smaller 15-20 pounder and short work was made of him and he was put on ice! A nice school of mahi were lurking around this line too, but nothing of graet size just like before. We decided to have a little (ok maybe alot) of fun catching these things on our rigs that we used to catch bait with light 10 pound tackle. We threw out everything we had at them to see if we could get one to bite, and they took anything and everything except the cut ballyhoo. They hit everything from plastic shrimp, to plastic minnows, to the spoons that I usually use on redfish in Louisana, we were just having plain old fun messing with the whole school! We stayed there longer than expected then headed back in.
http://i1149.photobucket.com/albums/o589/premier93/photo.jpg
http://i1149.photobucket.com/albums/o589/premier93/photo-1.jpg
We ended up leaving the dock 30 minutes later than we were planning to, so we just stopped and bought bait around 6:30 and then turned on the twin 300s, and let her run. The plan for the day was to troll around the nipple and weed lines for wahoo, and dolphin with maybe a shot at a sail or a bill fish. As we were headed out we passed some pretty thick patches of weeds but decided that we weren't going to stop til we were a good 40ish miles off, and we could stop at these patches on the way back. As we got farther and farther offshore the weeds really started to scatter, and we could not find a distinct line of weeds. We found a nice little rip and put out four lines behind the boat, two skirted ballyhoos and 2 yozuri bonita lures. We trolled around the rip and found others about 40-46 miles off around the nipple, and after about 45 minutes of trolling the penn international 50 with the orange striped bonita (or as I like to call it, the "Tiger") just took off. This fish was peeling drag like no other! As I finally got its head turned around, it didn't take long to get him too the boat, the first gaff missed but the second sunk right in and a 30-40ish pound wahoo was brought into the boat!
We set the lines back out hoping for another strike, but after a couple hours we stopped trolling and went to deep drop for some AJ's since we had my brothers girlfriend on board who had never been off-shore before. We found 3 consecutive patches of weeds, and put out a cigar minnow and let it sink, before you know it a chicken Mahi, and its friend had come up to grab it! But nothing that was of size at all.
We started trolling again around 1-2 o'clock and had no strikes for about an hour and a half so we decided to pack it up and try to catch some grouper really fast and then head in, we went out to the "super secret spot" and couldn't get a bait past the Snapper which was a huge bummer, those things are EVERYWHERE. We had to of caught and released about 20 of them before the day was over.
After getting worn out by the snapper we decided to call it a day and run in. As we were running in we saw a group of birds diving around some weedlines and decided to check it out! We put back out the yozuri tiger and trolled around the weeds and just like that another wahoo hit, this time a smaller 15-20 pounder and short work was made of him and he was put on ice! A nice school of mahi were lurking around this line too, but nothing of graet size just like before. We decided to have a little (ok maybe alot) of fun catching these things on our rigs that we used to catch bait with light 10 pound tackle. We threw out everything we had at them to see if we could get one to bite, and they took anything and everything except the cut ballyhoo. They hit everything from plastic shrimp, to plastic minnows, to the spoons that I usually use on redfish in Louisana, we were just having plain old fun messing with the whole school! We stayed there longer than expected then headed back in.
http://i1149.photobucket.com/albums/o589/premier93/photo.jpg
http://i1149.photobucket.com/albums/o589/premier93/photo-1.jpg