SAILFISHING 101

Instead of a Gulfstream crossing this year we decided to stay in Islamorada and fish for Sailfish. We enlisted our fishing partners Don & Jeannie Looper again and planned a trip between Christmas and New Years. We have caught several Sailfish over the years but have never gone out and specifically targeted them. We decided to hire a local expert/mate to go with us and teach us the tricks of the trade. We had heard about a local Captain named Kenny Spaulding so got in touch with him and he put us on to a mate he uses from time to time named Bill Moccia. Bill met us at 6:45 AM (that's right AM) and was rearing to go. We had everything we needed that morning...some chum to bring the Ballyhoo in and ice for any other fish we might catch besides Sails.

Bill told us the best place to catch Ballyhoo was just east of Alligator Lighthouse. We headed northeast out of Bay Harbour toward Indian Key bridge. We had gone out through the Indian Key bridge many times in our previous boats when we stayed at Worldwide Sportsman, but not in the FFIII. The bridge is not tall enough to pass under with the riggers up, so instead of dropping them along side the boat, we dropped them into the fishing position and with plenty of room to spare we cruised under the bridge and soon had made our way to the Alligator Light. This was obviously the place to be as there were several charter boats already anchored up and loading up on bait.

After a few tries at anchoring in the perfect spot (one of my favorite things to do) we got our chum out and soon had some Hoo's in our slick. The bait was fairly skittish, probably because they had already been harassed by the other boats, but we managed to catch more than enough for the days fishing.

The technique Bill used was to hook the Ballyhoo through the nose with a 6/0 circle hook with the barb up. He then wrapped a small copper wire around the shank of the hook and along the beak of the bait. We used 5 feet of 50 pound fluorocarbon leader tied directly to the main line, 30 pound mono on a spinning reel. It could then be trolled or used as a pitch bait. We trolled very slowly, 2-3 knots, by shifting one engine into gear and then out and the same with the other engine. We fished the reef line from 90 to 150 feet of water, near Alligator Lighthouse. We had baits on the outriggers only.

The wind had switched to the west and contrary to what you are told in Missouri in Islamorada "wind from the west, fish bite the least" in the ocean. We had what we believed to be 2 or 3 Sailfish bites, but no hookups. We did not see or hear much action on the Sails that day.  The cool thing is when you have live Ballyhoos splashing around on the top of the water you might just catch a Tuna or Dolphin, which we did. Here is some proof.......ahhhhhh sushi!

After a few more futile attempts at catching a Sail we decided to run out a little deeper and see if we could pick up a weedline and try and catch a couple more Dolphin. We fired up and headed out and immediately the port engine shut down :(  It was similar to the time it went down on our trip to the Bahamas in 2008. We limped in and checked it out the next day. The primary fuel filter looked fine but I changed it and the secondary filter as well.   It worked:):)  We had enough fresh fish for dinner a couple nights and had a couple dozen baits left over which we put in the freezer for another day. We also picked up some valuable tips on Sailfishing which we plan to use again someday.

CTM