Friday, January 8, 2010

Offshore fly fishing

Perhaps some day I'll elaborate on the ins and outs of offshore fly fishing for those who have never experienced it. We've been doing it the last two days and both days were very typical.

Yesterday, we're pulling 5 teasers/hookless baits to raise sailfish, tease them to the boat and switch to the fly rod. It's pretty cool fishing, because it all happens right there at your feet, but it's not always easy to do, especially when the fish aren't biting, therefore not very aggressive. All day we raised 4 sails, got one of them to bite the fly and missed it, but with a spinning rod, I talked it into eating a ballyhoo on a circle hook. One for one. We also raised 4 dolphin and got no bites. The other boats around us caught 5-8 sails and a few dolphin, which we feel like we could have done if we were fishing with bait. Pretty slow day.

This morning we start off raising a dolphin that got aggressive enough for us to get a good look at, but not hot enough to eat the fly. Then we raised a sail and another sail that we did get a really good bite out of, but missed. Things were starting to look a lot like the day before, then we got the call.

Danny on the Spanish Fly found another tuna attractor, 7 miles to the south. Within 30 minutes, we were doubled up on 20-30 pound dolphin on the fly. It was pretty incredible, casting a hookless ballyhoo to get the dolphin fired up, then teasing them to the boat where they READILY ate about anything presented. All in all we landed 15 big dolphin, all on the fly. Also about 20 of those pesky yellowfins, from 5-25 pounds, all on the fly. And a nice tuna, wahoo and another big wahoo lost on the deep jigging spinning tackle.

Danny and Marvin each caught a couple of marlin within site of us while live baiting. We only live baited one malin, eating a tuna off of the fly line.

We need a billfish tomorrow......