by Capt. James Marko
It’s that time of the year when our water is flat calm and you can run 30 plus miles to fish some public numbers for some cool deep-water species. In this article, we’ll discuss a few must-haves and some tips to have a successful day offshore. Bait and chum are going to be the main ingredients to a successful day offshore. You can fish about any public wreck, about 30 plus miles, and find a good quantity of fish. This time of the year I really like to take out a couple blocks of chum and shake them till I get the flow I want. I’ll put one block off of each side of the boat. Once I get the slick I want going, I start live bait chumming. Anything under 6 inches gets flicked off the back. Anywhere from 2-3 at a time, but be smart not to waste it all. For example, I went out with the owner of NautiKnots (an apparel company) and my best friend Capt. Mike 36 miles Sunday and we had a blast. When we got to the spot we weren’t the only boat there, but we found a nice patch of structure and made the most of it. Mike and I started working the chum bags till we had a nice slick going and started live chumming while they deep dropped. They both immediately got slammed by some lane snappers. As they were reeling up I saw streaks that indicated Amberjack to me. Immediately I tossed a bunch of bait out because I knew they would chase it to the surface and stay around if there was enough live bait out there. Well, low and behold, I was right and we had about a dozen at one time of 60 plus pound AJs. Mike and I started free-lining baits and immediately doubled up. I passed the rod off and hooked into another. Well here’s where things got crazy! The Goliath knew there were some hook-ups and decided to play, too. The AJ I had on got slammed and ripped the rod out of my hand (not my proudest moment) and the other rod got snapped in half when a Goliath blew up Ken. Mike and Ken still landed two studs, but I wasn’t happy so I dropped a chunk of Barracuda and let the owner of NautiKnots yank the menace up. It didn’t take long, we had him up but no rods in his mouth. All in all, a good day, got home just in time for NFL.