Tournament season is here with a vengeance. MAKO finished up fourth for the Bermuda Billfish Blast. We came out of the blocks quickly with two Blues on day one. We did ok but Que Mas released five Blues for the day. What a show! Well done Travis and crew.
Things were slower on day two, we missed a White bite and a possible Blue. Not a bad showing, it would have been nice to catch that White and place. The Blender was working overtime, even if the fish were not. Congratulations to all the winners.
The Yellowfin Tuna have returned after the current broke. They were on the Southeast corner of Challenger for the week. The weather was a little breezy for the tournament - nothing terrible but it wasn’t flat out there.
The Bermuda Billfish Release Cup just finished and MAKO finished second! Chuck McKenzie and his sons chartered MAKO for the tournament and Chuck was able to catch the first Blue of the tournament. The play by play on the fishing can be found here. Congratulations to Team McKenzie - great job guys!
Warm water is here. Tuna and bait are here. White Marlin are here (in droves) and Blue Marlin have appeared.
After a delayed start, it seems like the season is back on track. We are getting 3-4 White Marlin shots almost every day (don’t ask the hookup ratio on the big lures we pull in Bermuda). As of June 27, MAKO has two Blues under our belt. The first of the year was caught by Jay - his first!
Jay did a great job and brought the little 250 pounder to the boat in short order. Have you noticed how much less fun the traditional swim is now that everyone has phones, blackberries, iPods, etc. in their pockets? It is essentially impossible to sneak up on anyone anymore.
The Yellowfin Tuna have been accommodating. We are catching 4 fish a day in the 50 pound range when we stop on Argus. It sure is nice to have them back in Bermuda. The Blackfin and Yellowfin both seem more than happy to hit topwater plugs - that sure keeps things interesting.
Tournament season is in full swing, with our friends on the visiting boats pretty much all arrived. Thoughts are on the World Cup being fished on the 4th - if you are fishing it in Bermuda, you always have a chance.
Warmer water to the South of the island had brought bait, birds and life to the South side of Argus. With this activity came a flurry of Marlin and Tuna activity for the fleet. We all feel much better now.
We had a good week with the Tuna and caught a couple of White Marlin. Still waiting for our first Blue, but we are getting shots so it’s just a matter of time now.
We had Mike and crew, Black & Blue members, for much of the week. They did their usual thing…Wahoo, Dolphin, White Marlin, put out a propane fire, Yellowfin Tuna…they managed to fill up their week!
On Friday we went 1 for 4 on White Marlin, the fleet went 2 for 10 on Whites and 0 for 3 on Blue Marlin.
Sunday was a great day with 6 Yellowfin Tuna in the 50 pound range caught in the chum, followed by going 1 for 2 on White Marlin on the way home. We also missed a Blue that was FIRED up back there in the spread. We saw a big one that did not want to eat. She just swam under the right short and scared all of us. You obviously want them to bite, but even seeing one of those big girls is exciting as hell.
Blue water is good if you are looking at it from the bridge while trolling. On a sea surface temperature chart it is not so handy. The good news is that the cold water is finally giving way to some at least reasonable water - we got 74 degrees yesterday for the first time all year.
You can see the signs of the warmer water even without the gauge. Bait is showing up on the south side of Argus and there is some bird activity starting. It kind of reminds me of the second week in May instead of June.
We have been out pretty steadily. We have hooked and jumped off three Blues. Haven’t caught one yet - maybe today! I think the fleet is up to 3 Blues caught for the year. I hope that with the warmer water the bite picks up steam.
We have been seeing some really small tuna as well as some Yellowfin in the 60 pound range. They seem to like to bite on the troll more than in the chum so far.
The Wahoo are slow but steady. We catch one or two most days. We got a couple in the 60 pound range this week.
I am hoping this will turn out to be a transition week and we hit summer by my next report. I guess we will all have to wait and see.
We just finished up a few days fishing with Chris Woodward and the gang from Sport Fishing Magazine as well as Eros from Bluefin USA. We were concentrating on using top water plugs to try and scare up some fish. The water was cold and bait was scarce, but we managed to get quite a few shots of the guys with Tuna.
Have you noticed the new(ish) format for Sport Fishing? I think it is really cool how they take a subject and really go into detail on it over a number of articles.
We had a great time fishing with everybody and I hope we can lure them back for another visit later in the year.
The link to the Sport Fishing web article is here.
Things seems to be picking up with water temp and life on the banks. I am looking forward to this week.
We have not quite gotten into the summer routine of fishing reports on MAKO, so we thought we would cheat and post all of May’s news at once.
The weather has generally been great and last year’s seaweed has stayed away so far. The water temperature, however, is very cold compared to what history would have you expect. Yesterday was the first day my machine read 70 degrees all year. We have spend most of the month around the 65 degree mark. Very odd - especially given the unusually hot water they are seeing around the equator.
Whether it is the water temperature or not, who knows, but the Spring Wahoo run has been odd. There is not as much bait as you would expect and the bait that is there is congregating in unusual places for this time of year.
We have had some good days - the Teachers Rugby Football Club had their tournament a couple of weeks back and the girls handily beat the boys with a 62 pound wahoo for Kimmie and and WHOPPER 72 pounder for Sacha. Melissa managed to beat the stuffing out of a 35 pounder and Rene caught a wahoo that weighed roughly the same as her at 50 plus.
The blender came out at that point as the girls were feeling pretty confident. (An important note to those trying to eat a healthy diet - frozen yogurt is a terrible substitute for ice cream in blender drinks.)
The boys were the following day. What a difference! One bonito, lots of inside out South Africans.
Congratulations to the girls!
The fleet has, I think, one blue this year. We missed one about a week ago and there were a couple jumped off Sunday. A few Whites have been caught as well.
We are counting on Mr. Marlin to come on strong during June. I will let you know how it goes.
We just finished a week long family trip to Costa Rica. Despite concerns about keeping non-anglers and new anglers entertained, the trip was a huge success.
Never has the drink box on De Mako contained so much apple juice at the expense of beer! Chowie started referring to the juice as ceveza para los ninos!
Captain Mike and his wife Daphne really pulled together a great trip for us. We fished four and a half days. We saw one (!) dorado. All the rest were Sailfish…and, were there ever a lot of them. We are pretty poor at keeping score but we had at least 125 behind the boat and at least 100 bites. We decided to have the mates stand down and do our own hook setting and our hookup ratio showed it! Given the less experienced anglers (and the crappy performance of the experienced ones) it was to be expected, but it was certainly entertaining and great fun! Scott got his groove back on the last day going six for eight – pretty good ratio for a guy who has been stuck in Manhattan over the past ten years.
The kids did really well too. The senior member, at 9, caught three, the 7 year old caught 5, the other seven year old caught a sail and the four year old “caught” a ballyhoo to the cheers of the cockpit audience.
Granny Radke was pretty sharp, teaching the boys how it was done. Grandpa Radke managed to do some damage to the Sails and the rum supply. One of his fish produced three amazing pics – shown below. Pic 1 the fish is hooked and all is well. Pic 2 the hook comes out and you see the mono starting to spring back. Pic 3 looks like one of the kids was scribbling on the picture – the mono is a squiggle and the Sail a distant memory.
Non fishing activities included a trip to Tortuga Island on the De Mako. The island has a great beach with no waves or surge. The kids predictably loved the sand, banana boats, jet skis, kayaks, etc. The adults found a shady spot and with the help of the cooler Chowie packed, spent the afternoon sipping beer in the shade. A special thank you to Arturo who was kind enough to oversee the banana boating operation. Doesn’t he look fetching in his helmet? No wonder the female staff of Los Suenos are fighting in the street over him.
We also spent a day at Manuel Antonio National Park in Quepos. It is a bit of a ride, but well worth it. The park and its animals are really cool to see.
Over the years, we have been lucky enough to make some great friends among the media outlets that concentrate on our sport. We have also been happy to help with scientific research to help us understand our fisheries better.
We put a page together of the more recent articles. We will fill them in as we find the older ones:
The 2009 Video is here! I hope you enjoy watching it. It sure was fun fishing it.
Make sure you call or email to talk about our ability to package lodging with your fishing trip this summer. We are really excited about the ability to save our customers some serious money and stay in a nice house instead of a hotel.
We are almost done with our 2009 Mako Charters video. It was really enjoyable to go through all the best moments of 2009 and put them together with some music. If you would like a copy, just let us know by emailing where we should send a CD to mako@logic.bm
Fishing Reports
