February and Early March Report

The fishing is getting better by the day. Late February and early March has seen the most improvement in fishing activity. The key is to not be focused in on just one species of fish. Many people want to catch sailfish and that is understandable, but keep an open mind and enjoy the other fish that come in to your spread. We have caught everything from grouper to kingfish to sailfish and tarpon. And while we fished for other species such as grouper and kingfish we end up catching a couple of sailfish along the way. Many of the boats in the fleet are only fishing for sailfish and they end up missing many of the other species that Miami has to offer. The sailfish bite has been good. We have caught sailfish on every one of our trips except two and we have had a couple trips with multiple sails. In the particular trip were we didn't catch a sailfish I had west winds in excess of 30 MPH! Again we switched plans went into the Haulover Inlet and caught barracudas, yellow jacks, blue runners and a grouper. We had action on every drift. Let's get into some of the particulars of the past month. Since I already spoke about the sailfish let's get into some other species. The kingfish have been very cooperative lately. We have caught several large fish and many fish in the 20# class. Almost all of these fish have been caught on 12# line which makes for a lot of fun. {%image_id=37529%}{%image_id=37527%}{%image_id=37526%} One fish that was absent from my last report but has shown up recently has been the mahi-mahi. Some have been caught offshore and some have been caught in on the reef while sail fishing. Right now if you run offshore of Haulover or Miami look in that 900-1200 range. The bottom fishing has been a little slow and this has been due to a lack of current. Without a good north current the bottom fishing can get a little tough. This forces me to become a little more proactive and jump from wreck to wreck in search of grouper and snapper. Pretty soon almost every wreck in Miami will have amberjacks on them and they will make it a little hard to get a bait past them. That is a nice problem to have. I have done a couple of tarpon trips and I have caught tarpon on every single trip. Right now we are averaging about 1-3 caught fish per trip. So overall the fishing is good just keep an open mind and enjoy a great day on the water. Till next time, {%image_id=37528%} Best of Luck… Lucky Fishing Charters, Capt. Gil Gutierrez