I wait the entire year for the June bite offshore. Every year, the schoolie sized mahi mahi form up into large schools and migrate past our coastline, feeding voraciously on everything they come into contact with. It can be really exciting going offshore in search of these schools of fish. One school can have 50 or more fish within it. Mahi mahi have a very useful character trait, in that they don’t leave each other behind. In other words if you find a school of mahi mahi and have one hooked up, just leave him swimming out there and the entire school will stay right with the boat. It can take some time trolling out there to find a school like this, but what a pot of gold it is to find. Once you find them, just set the boat on a drift and bail them on 20 pound spinning tackle.
Closer in, on the edge of the gulfstream, there are still some monsters to be caught as. Big amberjacks are still biting around the shipwrecks, as are some nice grouper and cobias. Wrecks over 200 feet deep work the best this time of year and live bait always gets the best bite. There are still some monster sharks around in June too. Hammerheads and dusky sharks are out there in 300 to 400 feet of water and can be caught with big bloody slabs of bonito or kingfish fished along the bottom. Trolling the reef in June is a lot of fun too. We get lots of action trolling for kingfish, bonito, barracuda, blackfin tuna and wahoo. As the surface temperature heats up, fish tend to go deeper, so you will get your best bites on deep planer baits when trolling.
June is a great time of year for action, both inshore and offshore. Get ready for some good fishing. Tight lines everybody.
Capt. Nick Colosi
New Lattitude Sportfishing
(954) 707-2147
www.newlattitude.com