Miami, Florida - Offshore

This past week we found plenty of Cero mackerel between Pacific Reef Light and the Whistle Buoy. This was a planned excursion to fish for the Cero’s and as predicted they were there in about 60 feet of water. We anchored and chummed and caught approximately 20 fish. Many of them were small but a few were in the five pound range. I also heard of anglers doing well on cero’s just south of Government cut. Before the trip we had no trouble finding large schools of pilchards, which we netted and filled our bait wells. While we were anchored we also had one lonely dolphin come into our chum line and while we were chumming with live pilchards we had a sailfish attempt to take a bait but he wouldn’t commit. Prior to the cero fishing we fished the deeper reefs for bottom fish. We caught a few mutton’s and lost at least five big fish that we were unable to turn. There have been good reports of big grouper on the deeper reefs and drops. We had two fish that were eaten by larger fish, probably bigger black grouper or jewfish. On the same trip we saw a few frigate birds diving and went to investigate. It was a huge school of Artic bonito that were crashing on the surface. We tossed a few pilchards out and had instant hook-ups. An angler to the north off Jupiter told me they had a good day of fishing, catching large dolphin in the thirty pound class. These fish could be moving into our waters any day now. They are moving south to get away from the colder weather to the north. Look for increasing sailfish action in our area as well as kingfish and cero mackerel, and there could be a run of dolphin at almost any moment. The bottom fishing should be good also for the next month or two.