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
Mako made the trip to North Carolina and back. We did some work to fix all those little things that were not quite right when we left in June. She is ready to go now and it looks like our timing is good - the Yellowfin Tuna are pretty thick out there!
I am looking forward to having a boat in Bermuda this winter to take advantage of those days where the weather and fish cooperate. Hopefully I will be able to post a real fishing report in the coming days.
To all of our friends, have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. I hope we get a chance to fish with you in 2010.
We were out a fair amount this week. We lost Thursday to weather but that was it. Wednesday we were out with George Dragonetti and friends and was it ever rough. About as much as you would want to deal with, that is for sure. They were troopers and we managed to catch a reasonable number of Wahoo. Well done guys, way to hang in there.
Note how trim the shirtless one looks!
By Friday the wind had quit and all we were left with was the swell. Much more comfortable, but still bumpy. We had Argo out and we were able to catch enough Wahoo and Yellowfin Tuna to keep the day interesting. The Wahoo we are catching trolling dead bait are in the 20 - 40 pound class. We have not been catching many Wahoo bigger than that over the past couple of weeks.
Want to feel like your boat is bigger? Put these two in the cockpit.
With the tide running to the West, the action in on the Eastern side of Challenger. Argus has produced a number of good days for other boats, but we focused on Challenger this week as the bait moved from the Southeast corner to the Eastern turn and even to the Northeast corner. By Sunday the bulk of the bait had moved north from the Southeast corner and we were doing better with the Wahoo and Tuna up that way.
Nice one Rhyn!
What we did find on the Southeast corner were Robins, and lots of them. We had Rhyn and Makenna Bearden out and they put a hurting on the Robin population, filling up the livewell and then the chumming box. Later in the day we were able to cash those live Robins in for some much nicer Wahoos. i think we ended up with two fish in the 60 pound range and one in the 50s. Fishing with live bait is great fun as long as you don’t focus on how many fish you lose, but instead enjoy the larger size of the ones you do catch.
The tuna catchers.
We are going to be out of commission for a little while pretty soon as we bring MAKO back to Carolina for some odds and ends to be done. We will be back to Bermuda in time for January which, last year at least, produced really great fishing for Yellowfin Tuna and Wahoo.
We will be able to sneak in another week of fishing before we depart. If your freezer is empty, call and book a trip. The Wahoo fishing remains consistent.
As the weather moves towards Bermuda’s fall pattern, so are the fish.
In late September and early October a typical year would see a migration of “Ticker Mackerel” (that is what we call them in Bermuda, they are actually small Little Tunny or, thanks to the Florida Museum of Natural History, Euthynnus alletteratus) moving from the Harbour out to the Edge and the Banks. Don’t ask me why they move from inshore, where they are the top of the food-chain to offshore, where they are everybody’s favorite snack, but they do. These baits are small enough that they are bite sized for Yellowfin Tuna and especially Wahoo. 2009 seems like it will shape up to a year with a poor live bait season. Those Ticker Mackerel are not to be found offshore - at least yet. The only spot we have found them reliably is one small section of Bermuda’s Edge.
The lack of Ticker Mackerel, together with a strong West tide, is making live bait fishing an unproductive use of time. There is a bonus to all of this, however. The lack of bait has made the Wahoo ready to bite and bite well on the troll. Similarly, the Yellowfin Tuna that are around are ready to eat. This has added up to a number of pretty respectable catches this week. It seems like the Eastern Turn to the SE Corner of Challenger is holding the most fish lately.
Friday - Monday we had the Radke boys fishing with us and we produced a pile of Wahoo and a pretty good haul of Yellowfin Tuna. I love fishing in October as the Wahoo strikes often come in doubles or triples (we had two quadruples this weekend). Calling Wahoo fishing exciting for the guys in the cockpit is an understatement. There is plenty of work for the Mate, the customers and the Captain.
We will try to get out a fair amount this week - weather permitting. I hope to have more of the same to report next week.
Fishing Reports
