Category Archives: Capt. Mike Blog

“The Customer is Always Right”
Nov. 4
Sailfishing Fort Lauderdale

Today great friend and long time repeat customer Jerry, from New York joined us for what turned out to be a great day of sailfishing off Fort Lauderdale. Jerry and his good friends Dom and Anthony pronounced (ANT-KNEE) chartered the Local Knowledge looking for some Dolphin action (mahi mahi) and possibly some sailfish or sharks. The past few weeks mother nature has dumped tons of rain us and much to our dismay the fresh water locks were opened dumping huge amounts of fresh dirty water through our port and shutting down the bite just a day or two before their arrival. Good news however, we found an edge far offshore in over 900 feet with huge patches of weed, floating debris and some mahi mahi on it. We were pretty excited and jumped off two nice mahi in the first ten minutes or so and that was it. We spent another hour pounding the patches and the edge, it looked incredible but the fish just were not cooperating. Jerry looked up at me and asked if we could go back into the reef and try for sails and sharks. In my heart I knew it was pointless, muddy water, no current and a west wind, it just wasnt the right conditions. I tried to explain my concerns but Jerry wasnt having it, He Wanted Sailfish! So off we went on a big run back to just outside the reef. We were met with exactly the same dismal muddy water, no current and west wind but we put ‘em out. Good thing too. We had our first sail up in about twenty minutes and ANT-KNEE jumped in the chair. The sailfish burned off a blistering first run, shredding the oceans surface along the way, while jumping and cartwheeling the entire time. We cleared the other lines and began pursuit. After an incredible 20-30 show we had the fish at boatside for pictures, a trophy measurement and a clean release! Great Job!! After all the high fives it was time to regroup and we did it just in time. We no sooner got the baits deployed when another sailfish crashed the left long kite bait. This time Big Dom jumped in the chair for his turn at mother oceans greatest gamefish. And after another classic sailfish display of blue, purple and silver fury we got another measurement and a great release!! The only problem, I’ll never hear the end of it from Jerry! You can’t catch ‘em if you dont try!

Capt. Mike
Local Knowledge
954.522.4773

Sport fishing south Florida with us today was Dave and his wife from Minnesota. We started catching live bait at the buoy first thing and I think Dave was thrilled with just catching the blue runners on the ultra light tackle. We then moved on to a little bit of trolling and whooped on some kingfish and bonita reel quick. Moving on from there we went Wreck fishing. Now Dave had already fished this week on another charter boat the “Lady Pamela” and had a good time but didnt catch anything over 20 pounds and that was his goal. Well he reached it by catching a beautiful 40 pound amberjack!! Great Job Dave!!

Charter fishing Ft Lauderdale with us today was Francisco from Chile. The wind had been blowing pretty hard the last couple of days which had pushed the mahi mahi in pretty tight to the reef. Francisco chartered the boat by himself and we cleared the inlet. The seas were still a little rough and we got the lines out quickly once we reached the Fort Lauderdale sea buoy. We no sooner had our baits out and we had our first mahi on. We put a nice 8 pounder in the box. Turning back toward where we had the bite we hooked another larger 15 pound mahi and put that in the box. On the next turn Fransisco caught another mahi and a bonita. He turned to us and said “that was better than I expected the whole trip, take me in” so we did. Thanks Francisco!

Fishing Fort Lauderdale today was good friend and customer DJ Mike from Texas. Mike has been fishing with me now for I believe a little over a year and he has had some tremendous luck. He caught four sailfish by himself and a huge hammerhead shark one of the last times he fished with us. This time we had a little good luck and a little bad luck. The good luck was that Mike had been wanting to catch a blackfin tuna for sometime now and he caught five with us today, the bad luck they were on the smaller side. We also tried pitch baiting a sailfish on the way in but couldnt get the bite.
The next day we went out again and fishing was even slower. We tried everything trolling, live baiting and dropping on the wrecks. We found one kingfish, luckily Mike knows how fishing is (sometimes great,sometimes not so great). On the way in the inlet however there was a huge school of mullet that were getting pushed around by some unseen predators. I pulled the throttles back and we pulled some small spoons around the school and caught a couple of small bluefish. Then the real fish showed up! Giant tarpon began erupting in and through the school right off the back of the boat. We quickly snagged a mullet and pitched it back in the school. WSe did this several times while the tarpon continued to crush the school. We finally got a bite but pulled the fish off on the first run. The next bait we pitched Mike caught a giant Jack Crevelle. After that everything kinda quit just as fast a s it had begun. Overall we had a good couple days. Thanks again Mike!

Fishing Fort Lauderdale today was Great. We had Brian and Jamie from Boston, here in Fort Lauderdeale for their Honeymoon. Brian must be doing something right to get her to go fishing on their Honeymoon. We cleared the inlet about 8:15 this morning and put out the trolling spread. It was a little slow to start with just one kingfish for the first hour. A little while later Jamie caught a very small bullet bonita and then Brian caught a big skipjack tuna. I believe Brian was up all night cause he had a little bit of trouble with the tuna but after some good ribbing he managed. I ventured a little farther offshore and found the Mother Load. We saw four frigate birds working the showers of baits being run by the fish that surrounded the giant piece of bamboo floating in the water. On our first pass we got jumped by three nice mahi of which caught two. The next pass we caught a small wahoo and another mahi and so it went every pass we would get a wahoo or two and a mahi. We ended up with six wahoos and five mahi mahi. Guys what a great trip we really enjoyed having you and best of luck!!!

Day 5-10
Casey, Doug, Daniel and Tom Busted up some yellowtail snappers, a couple of small groupers, lots of cudas and a shark with us. Now day 6 was just a little more exciting fish wise. We had Bruce and Doug from Iowa, Ron from right here in Pompano Beach, Fl and Wendell from Bonita Springs. We went offshore today first looking for mahi mahi and Blue Marlin. We worked it hard too all the way to the north, but we only jumped off one small mahi. What was killing me was that the Hooked Up our sister ship caught a Blue Marlin and jumped off a sailfish. I so wanted to stay out in the deep but the guys were getting bored so we raced to the reef and caught a bunch of barracudas reel quick. We slabbed one of the big cudas out and sent it down on the ledge. INSTA BITE and a big one I believe it was Harry who jumped in the chair to slug it out for the next 15-20 minutes on what turned out to be ANOTHER giant grouper another 70# black. WIth that sea monster in the boat everyone was recharged to go back offshore. We put out the blue marlin spread and caught up to Taco on the Hooked Up where he had seen his fish over the past few days, we no sooner got there that the right long came down hard with a 200# blue marlin jumping on the other end. It didnt last long it took a couple hundred tards of line reel quick made a few jumps and threw the hook. And to boot while we were reeling in the line another larger fish about 400# popped up on another lure took a quick look and swam off. DAMN! Everyone saw the one we had hooked which was pretty impressive, not to many people from Iowa get to see one of those. We called it a day and headed home.he rest of our trip was great lots of barracudas, cero mackeral, a couple of really big kings and a huge assortment of bottom fish, but that darn blue marlin eluded us again. Thanks to everyone at East Penn for yet another great trip, we cant wait for next year!

Day Three brought Another great with Brian, Art, Ron, Chuck and Joe from East Penn and O’Reilly Auto.  We didnt pull in any giant sea montsters like the previous two days but we had alot of action deep dropping and trolling.  We caught a big horse eye jack on the troll as well as a shark.  Neither one what you would expect to catch on the troll.  Lots of barracudas a couple of queen snappers and pomfrets.

Day four we went out real quick in the morning with Josh, Feddie and Harold from East Penn and Jerry.  Now Josh never almost never gets to go fishing and neither does Freddy.  Josh is busy running things behind the scenes for this special event and Freddy is busy cooking and putting on big spreads to feed all these guys, so it was nice to get them out even for only two hours.  We started trolling and caught another horse eye jack that Jerry reeled in.  We then raced for the edge as the other boats were reporting Mahi Mahi catches.  By the time we got everything back out Freddy informed us we had to get back in, we had new arrivals coming in.  So we headed back in but made a quick drop on the edge.  Big Josh caught a big Amberjack and made quick work of it.  Good work guys.

In the afternoon we headed back out with Harold again from East Penn, Daniel, Adolpho, and Keith.  This time we headed straight for the edge where we heard the reports of the Mahi Mahi earlier in the day and no sooner did we get the baits out when we found some plywood floating and it was loaded with mahi mahi.  We caught 20 or so real nice fish and a wahoo of that one piece of wood.  We had mahi everywhere and everyone got to catch a couple on light spin tackle before we moved on. The rest of the time we picked at a few more dolphin out of the blue.  What a great second half.  Thanks Guys see you next year!!!

Day two finds us with Keith and Mike from Tuscon, Kurt from Alberta and Steve and John from Pennsylania. Fishing started offshore in search of Mahi mahi, marlin, sails or anything that would bite for that matter.  We ventured about four miles offshore which off of Bimini puts you in over 2000 feet of water.  We found some decent edges and weedlines to fish to but no bites.  We eased back up on the reef for the barracuda assault and caught about 10 in fifteen minutes.  We kept a couple for bait and moved on.  I began looking for good bottom stucture on the fish finder and found a promising piece of bottom.  We sent down a giant blue runner on a 100# outfit (help yank the groupers or jacks from their home) and it wasnt but a few moments before we had a giant strike.  The pole just lurched down and I went ahead with the boat to help pull the fish from the structure and get it off the edge away from the sharks.  After about a 10 minute battle Mike pulled up a 70# black grouper, the largest I’ve ever caught or seen for that matter!  We tried a few more drops and caught a couple small sharks and then headed for home. Another great day!

Bimini Day 1 East Penn Trip

Wow! I can’t believe we are finally here in Bimini with East Penn Manufacturing again. We’ve been looking forward to this trip all year.  We started off Day 1 with Darren and Dwayne from Ellis Battery in Missouri, Mike and John from Midwest Wheel in Des Moines, John from East Penn and Joe from Deka Batteries. As I pulled the throttles back on the “Local Knowledge” after clearing the cut and gliding over the “wall”, the trolling lines went out as we worked our way North. After an hour or so it was quite evident that the Barracudas were out in force.  Everyone caught one or two cudas, we jumped off a small mahi mahi and worked our way to a deep drop spot.  Upon arrival at the “SPOT” I went over how to use the big Penn 130 electric reel as we prepared to send the baits down in over 1400ft of water.  The guys were excited as I told them deep dropping is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re going to get and today was no exception.  On the first drop we caught three pompfrets, quite an interesting fish that look like giant black piranhas with huge eyes.

 The next drop we caught another pomfret and after that a giant queen snapper, which I just call “DEEEEEEE-LICOUS”, it was the following drop that made things real interesting as Mike winched up what turned out to be a 74 pound wreckfish. 

 After putting that sea monster in the boat we put out the lures in hopes of a blue marlin as our sister ship the “Hooked Up” with Capt. Taco had a big 400#er on but eluded capture.  No shots for us on the troll so we called it a day with a bunch of happy campers. 

Bimini Trip 7/15/11 for East Penn Manufacturing

Today we left Fort Lauderdale Fishing waters for an even richer destination, Bimini in the Bahamas! After loading the boat with a ton of provisions (BEER) we shoved off.  We took our time getting over, fishing for blue marlin along the way.  About 17 miles off Ft Lauderdale we got a shot at a small blue marlin that dumped half a 50 wide on a Pakula lure on the right long before giving us the finger (fin) and pulling off.  We continued on our way finding some small boards and debris to fish to but no one was home.  Off in the distance we spotted what appeared to be something quite large floating in the water. Upon closer inspection a much more eerie scene developed.  It was a homemade refugee raft made of inner tubes and boards lashed together.  No souls dead or alive were found on the scene and we made a few passes with the baits, maybe some fish were home.

 No fish though so we finished our crossing without incident although we alerted a Navy Warship in the area of the raft as they had a better vantage point and could possibly spot someone.

 We pulled into Seacrest Marina in Bimini, unloaded and prepared for the next 10 days of non-stop fishing with East Penn Manufacturing and their best and biggest clients from Mexico, Canada and the U.S. I believe this is their 15^th year putting on this series of mini tournaments and they do one hell of a job. They charter 10 boats for 10 days, supply all the great food, beer and liquor one could possibly want, along with bait fuel, etc. It is the best coordinated event abroad or home that I have had the privilege of being involved with. 

Fishing Blogs and pics to follow, Stay Tuned!