Fishing the SW Banks

Went out Early Friday morning with two good friends of mine to try fishing off shore for Dolphin fish. The forecast was good so we wanted to go deep but having a small boat "deep" is not the same as it would be in a larger vessel. That morning was as predicted and we cleared the jetty to find 1 to 2 seas. We ran 40 mph all the was to our GPS fix and had the lines in 200ft of water by 0900. We saw people hooking up on fish all over the place but had a time getting hooked up because we were all rookies and had never caught Dolphin.

We tried skirted Ballyhoo to start with but with no luck so I threw in some artificial bait and bang 1st fish in the boat at 10:00. We really thought we were somebody then! We could have went home happy right then. But that would be silly because we had only been there an hour. So lines back in, bang! Another hook up, but because the crew was a bunch of rookies we lost that fish due to slack in the line. So we regrouped and keep on trolling 30 minutes went by and a rod goes down again and after a minimal fight and a quick gaff shot by yours truly another Dolphin in the boat!!

We are really crowing now!! It was 11:30 when we put that fish in the box, which would see the end of fishing in that area as nothing else would bite. So we unwrapped lunch and listened to the VHF. Not many people are getting fish and the ones that do have fish have only one or two and are much deeper than we are. We are happy to have just as many fish as anyone else and are yukking it up accordingly.

Decision time what do we do? Well the South West banks are about 20 miles from where we are and a report just came across the VHF that a guy was fishing there and was getting good fish. Make the decision easy for me, so off we go the the SW Banks. Pull into the Banks 45 minutes later. Put the lines in at 1pm and nothing was taking the bait. So to bolster the confidence of the crew I said " we will have a fish on about 1:30 or so" they laughed as we all knew our fishing was done with only 2 fish in the boat.

Guess what? 1:28pm rod goes off and we are hooked up on a fish that was not jumping at all, just screaming line off the reel like no tomorrow. I finally got the mystery fish slowed down with a quarter spool of line left on the reel. So now I'm making progress on the fish and after a few minutes of reeling and my left arm starting to get a little tired we have it coming to the boat but it was still too deep to see any color. Which was the opposite for the fish because it decided that it didn't like that white thing on the surface and took off again. So all that line I just made up starts going out again.

So there I was looking at a half spool of 50lbs test line and the fish is still going. I call it a shark at this point because it did what every it wanted to do. I jump up on the bow and we pursue the fish in question before I got spooled all together. After a few more minutes of chasing and gaining line the fish in right under the boat again so we stop. I put the drag on full and start cranking and after a minute we see color then stripes and I stopped reeling at that point and loosened the drag. We had a big wahoo hooked up on 80lbs mono and I didn't want to get cut off and we just eased it on up to the boat and made a great gaff shot to pull the monster over the side.

The biggest fish I have ever caught....63lbs of Wahoo. Wow what a day! Well it wasn't over we hooked up on another Dolphin right after that and then a 38lbs Wahoo after that. I could not believe the luck we had that day it was great! 12 hours in the water and 5 good fish, not bad for a little 20ft center console. The best thing was we ran 122 mile over those 12 hours and only burned 34 gallons of gas. Great day all around, I don't expect another one like it for a while. The weather just played out perfect for the small boat guys.

The Dolphin weren't that big but it was fun watching them jump!!!!!