By: Capt. Philip Watson
These tasty fish can be found on a variety of types of bottom. I like to start looking for these in no less than 140’ and deeper. You definitely can catch them shallower, but I like to bypass the small fish and get right to the numbers. On your bottom machine look for the big shows of fish especially with fish suspended in the water column. For bait, cigar minnows are by far my favorite, but sometimes they can be rather hard to come by so Pinfish and whitebaits are second best in my book.
The moon phases in the summer time and really effect your success in this fishery. Both the full and new moon create very strong currents out deep that can likely make you use a ton of lead just to get to the bottom which in turn can make it harder to feel the bite, especially if the fish have been up all night on the full moon feeding.
This Months highlighted trip was with the Rockstead Crew. The request was BIG fish and one they could possibly hang on the wall. My mine went straight to amberjacks and Barracuda, plus I wanted to see them struggle a little. The seas started out with some very large swells with a bigger surface chop, but the deeper we pushed the more the chop went away. First stop was a spring in 120’ when the amberjack met us up top with there mouths wide open. Probably because they knew season didn’t start for a few days. Everyone caught multiple jacks with our biggest eaten by a shark.
After the jack we pulled anchor and starting trolling our cuda lures around the spring. In short order we had the first fish on but right at the boat it pulled the hook. We started the troll again with high hopes but didn’t get anymore strikes. On the way home, I gave 15 minutes to troll around a smaller shallow wreck. Before we finished the first circle we had a 50” cuda skyrocket and hook right up. After all the drag screaming and high fiving we headed back to the dock.
Just Kickin Back Charters
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941-226-1100