By Capt. Jamie Holcombe
4/12 – We fished SW Banks area in the morning hoping for some wahoo and blackfin. Very slow on the ledge in the am, so I decided to troll offshore into 400 to 500 feet and still no luck. I heard reports of some wahoo being caught south of us, so I punched in the Outcrop area which was about 17 miles away and ran that way. The ocean was beautiful, so I rode in the tower to look for anything good along the way. About six miles short of our waypoint, I saw a nice weed line and fish jumping on it in 400 feet. Started to troll and caught one dolphin pretty quickly, then we found about a 4-foot log that had more dolphin on it. We worked the log and the weeds and ended up with 10 nice dolphin for the day, plus we missed at least as many.
4/13 – Headed out to try for wahoo and blackfin again. This time on the 200 line on the ledge. One other boat was working the area and had caught one wahoo and one blackfin over a couple of hours. We had no bites there so decided to push offshore again. Picked up one dolphin in 400 feet in scattered grass, then had no more bites in there so we pushed out further. From the tower, I saw a real nice edge with weeds formed up in 750 feet. Within five minutes, we had a triple hook up and caught two dolphin in the mid teens. We continued to pick at the dolphin for the next couple hours and ended up with 12 dolphin with a couple of them being real nice ones. We missed and pulled off quite a few, too. It was great to get out there for our first blue water trips of the season. It looks like the dolphin have arrived already which is great. Hopefully, the food fishing lasts through at least June.
