We’re in full swing of summer in July, and with it comes great fishing for South Florida offshore kayak angers.
Many small to medium sized kingfish are being caught from 60-120 feet of water on anything and everything from live bait like pilchard or goggle eye to small jigs and deep diving plugs. On some days you might get lucky and pull up a decent smoker.
This time of year around the deep wrecks, you can expect monster amberjacks, mutton snapper, and even big african pompano. In the Extreme Kayak Fishing Summer Slam part 1 which took place in June, one angler pulled up a whopping 36.8 pound african pompano, breaking the extreme tournament series record.
Free lining live goggle eyes or pilchards can be effective for catching nice blackfin tuna off the deep wrecks from 180-250 feet. Jigging has been most successful for offshore kayak anglers for catching jumbo blackfin reaching up to 30 pounds. Try using pink or glow in the dark jigs for your best chance of catching a jumbo blackfin.
Around the moon anglers will even jig up some big wahoo over 40 pounds that are just starting to roll in around the same depth the tunas are found. Many of these wahoo will be swimming under schools of bonito and little blackfin tuna feeding on them. When using live bait, use a downrigger or an egg sinker to get your baits down deeper in the water column. Some of my personal biggest wahoo were caught on an outgoing tide in front of Hillsboro Inlet. Be sure to launch as early as possible to target wahoo. Be sure to have all of your safety equipment, including a light because it will most likely be dark when launching. My wahoo success has been at first light.
Mahi fishing has been solid this time of year for offshore kayak anglers. Most of the mahi have been schoolie size 5-8 pounds. I’ve even seen a few small gaffer size mahi in the 10-15 pound range, but for the most part they have been schoolie size. What they lack in size they make up for in sheer numbers. Most schools of mahi have been found under birds or floating debris. The size of the schools of mahi has been impressive. Most of the schools have been averaging about 30-40 mahi per school. While offshore fishing for mahi in 300ft, I’ve seen some gaffer sized Mahi swimming with the big schools and anything I pitch at them gets devoured. Hopefully the mahi bite will still be thick for the second part of the Extreme Kayak Fishing Summer Slam Tournament scheduled for August 25th.
For more information on the final EKFT event of the year, as well as some awesome photos of what’s being caught in the tournament go to www.extremekayakfishing.com.
Joe Hector
954-895-4527
Extreme Kayak Fishing Inc.
www.extremekayakfishing.com
joe@extremekayakfishing.com