Todays customers were interested in a Family fun fishing trip
I had a father and his 3 sons for a family fun fishing trip. They were not worried about getting dinner as much as his boys having fun. The offshore fishing has been a bit slow the last few weeks and on my last trip, I saw a pretty good amount of live ballyhoo on the reef. I decided to start the day and anchor to try to catch live bait. I was looking for the Ballyhoo. Everything in the ocean eats them. On the Reef, Yellowtail snapper, Mutton snapper, Grouper, Mackerel, Kingfish, Barracuda, and Jacks all love to feast on Ballyhoo. Offshore, Sailfish, Blackfin Tuna, Wahoo, and Dolphin will all take a ballyhoo on the Troll.
That is one of the reasons I like to catch them and use them live. They are our “go-to” trolling bait, but they even work better when used live. The nice thing about catching live ballyhoo is that we can usually get a lot of action catching Yellowtail snapper. Some days it takes a little while for the live ballyhoo to show up within cast net range. Today it took about half an hour. We didn’t “crush” the bet, but I threw the net twice and got approximately 75 baits. That is plenty of bait for a 6-hour trip.
Once we got our bait, we slowly trolled the reef looking for bites. It wasn’t red hot fishing, but we did catch some nice Yellowtail snappers and some barracudas. It was decent action, but I wanted to keep the boys a little busier. I decided to move out to the “outer Bar”. That is a secondary, deeper, outer reef and it can be very good for live bait fishing.
The water on the outer bar was a little clearer than on the reef and that is a good thing when live baiting. The bites were not fast and furious, but the fish were bigger. Unfortunately, we lost the biggest fish we hooked. It was a Kingfish somewhere between 30-35 lbs in my estimation. Nobody did anything wrong, the fish just got off just out of gaff range. That’s the way it goes sometimes.
We did catch some nice Cero Mackerels and a very nice Mutton Snapper and some more Barracudas. The snappers are some of the best-eating fish in the Key West Waters
By the end of the Familly Fun Fishing trip, the family had plenty of fresh fish for dinner and all the boys had smiles on their faces. In my book, that is a successful day!
Barracuda caught and released on the Charter Boat Southbound in Key West, Fla.