Wind and plenty of it.

Look at all that breeze on the map above!  Not a normal June, that is for sure.  The weather kept us tied to the dock more than I would have liked this week.  But we did manage to get out a few days. 

Amy and Steve Fass toughed it out with us for two days.  The first day was quite rough, rainy and quiet.  They were rewarded the next day when the sun came out and the wind laid down for us.  Amy caught a Yellowfin around 60 pounds and Steve caught a nice Wahoo.  Both were taken on live Robins.  Steve got his on a mono leader – that does not happen very often.

We were two for three on Blues for the week.  On Friday we caught a small Blue on the shotgun rod and also had a nice fish – 450 pounds or so – come up on the teaser.  You have got to love those teaser bites!  Mate Peter pitched the fish a Blue Breakfast with two 11/0 hooks to her and she ate.  Everything stayed tight during the fight and we were able to release her as well. 

 Saturday and Sunday was the new release tournament in Bermuda.  We had a trip with Colin Barnes on Sunday.  It was slow for us and the fleet.  We released a White and I think the total catch for the fleet on Sunday was 1 Blue and 2 Whites.  Congratulations to Waste Knot with 3 Blue releases in the tournament.

With some days off, I was able to take care of a few little gremlins in the new boat – loose connections, unbalanced Ethernet networks (whatever that is) and a few bolts needed tightening.  I was also able to take some pictures of the inside of the new boat – we are STILL waiting for a nice day to take some running shots of her.

Each week we are taking the photos of that week and putting them on our Flickr site.  You can get to them by clicking on the photo gallery on this site.  We are trying to use only a few pics in the actual fishing report, there are a lot more in the gallery – go check them out.

Dan Jacobs and his team from Marlin magazine who organize the Bermuda tournaments are installed in the Hamilton Princess for the month of July.  The visiting boats are in and PW’s is starting to look like Pirate’s Cove Marina.  We have tournaments for each of the next three weeks and will keep you advised of how things go. 

The tide continues to run hard into the SW.  That is keeping fish on the North side of both banks.  I can’t wait to see what Bull on the Sea Toy does with this tide – will he give up his spot on the South East corner of Challenger Bank??????  We will see.

Wish us luck!  Talk to you next week.

- Capt. Allen DeSilva

Welcome to the first fishing report of 2009 and the first fishing report from the bridge of the new MAKO.

I know this is a fishing report, but the process of bringing in a new boat, clearing it through customs, getting it inspected, getting it licenced, getting the tackle on, etc. involves a lot of non-fishing time. Anyway, that is my excuse for why it has taken so long to get this report out. It just so happens that the timing of this report coincides with news of MAKO’s first Blue Marlin release…pure coincidence, I assure you.

When I was helping to finish the boat in North Carolina in May, I kept hearing from people back home how dry a May Bermuda was having. At the time I remember thinking…uh oh…bad news for me in June. Well, I was right. It has been an unusually rainy and windy first half of June. If it keeps up, I am going to officially designate June 2009 as “El Mes de Culu Mojado”. That is Spanish for the month that I have been rained upon frequently.

The fishing overall has been pretty good. The yellowfin tuna found Bermuda again after a three or four year absence and they seem to be congregated around the NW of Argus. Interesting, because all the Shearwater (birds) are on the Northern side of Challenger. Everyone I have heard of that stopped and chummed there thinking that the birds do this for a living and must know what is going on, have not had much success. Anchoring over the past week has been generally difficult with the tide running into the wind. Drifting if the breeze is up is also challenging. When the conditions are right, the tuna are there.

Wahoo have started the slide to summer lizards. The last one we caught was about 20 pounds. Last week we had a couple of days where we able to catch a few. This is always the pattern, as summer comes on strong, the Wahoo get small. Still, nice pull and good to eat. Just don’t cut up those new Marlin lures, Mr. Wahoo.

Speaking of marlin, the Whites seem to be showing up. We have not caught any but have had some suspected bites. They are pretty sneaky sometimes and you are never sure what it was that took a swipe at that shotgun rod.

Up until the 18th we have had some hard luck on the Blues. They are being caught in increasing numbers, but all of our bites had come loose before we could catch them. On the 18th, we had pretty good luck with a bite on Louis Point around 9 in the morning. The fish was good sized – call her 400 – and she put on a show greyhounding the same direction as the boat after eating a Evil on the left rigger. Unfortunately, part of the show included the lure flying out of the fish and the water and tracing a 20 foot arc in the sky. A good memory, but no release.

That first fish was also unique in that it was the only fish Jeff Radke did not miss that day. For example, a little later, we had a marlin that was FIRED UP come up on the long left teaser. Pete did a perfect job teasing the fish in closer and the fish actually started after my bridge teaser for a while. When we got that out of the water the fish turned and did a perfect circle back to Radke’s pitch bait. With a pretty aggressive bite, I thought we were off to the races but no. The tension went out of the pitch rod and Radke had another San Cocho to brag about.

You might have to watch it a couple of times to see the fish up the side of the boat actually grab the squid chain teaser. Hopefully we will have lots of interesting footage by the end of the year.

Later on in the afternoon we had another fish come up on the teaser. Again, a great job by Pete. Again Jeff pitched and…..missed. At least this time he let the Marlin eat all of the bait but the head so I guess he is getting better. In the course of the day, we picked up a small tuna and a small wahoo. So we managed to catch and release the first Blue Marlin, feed ourselves with the Tuna and Wahoo and practice our pitch baiting. All in all a very successful day.

Talk to you next Sunday!

— Capt. Allen DeSilva

We just finished a few days of fishing in Panama.  While the fishing was pretty slow, we did manage to fund enough action to keep ourselves entertained.  The trip started with a direct run east towards Zane Grey reef.  We anchored in a nearby bay just as it got dark and made a steak dinner.

In the morning we set out on our first day which is always a bit of a scouting mission as we have not been this way for a number of weeks.  The water looked much better than it had and as we trolled East towards the Columbian border (but not too close) we had a Black Marlin come up on the right teaser.  We pitched a bait to him and we were off to the races.  This fish, which was about 200 pounds, was acting more like an Atlantic Blue than a Pacific Black, digging down deep and staying there.  On the 30 pound outfits it is really hard to budge a fish when they want to do that, it is a matter of changing the angles on him and coaxing him up of his own accord.

After about 30 minutes, we got the leader but the fish was too green and jumped away from the mate.  We increased the drag at that point and put a little heat on the fish.  He did not like that much and De Mako was throwing smoke as the boat had to do quite a few maneuvers to keep the fish out of the props and out of the cockpit.

Some of the pictures came out pretty well – check out Chewie being stretched out by the fish.

We caught a sailfish later in the day and missed three others.  There were bonito everywhere!  It was actually hard to keep the baits away from them at times.  Not just on the edge, either.  They were all over.  We had a little luck with the sails, but generally it was quiet.

We ended each day trolling live bait over the reef.  You might be interested in the display of the depthfinder – now that is BAIT!  We never got a bite live baiting but it was great to be out around 5 or 6 pm.  The bait came to the surface in big bait balls, the birds were working, it was quite a site.

We trolled back towards Panama City on our last day and spent the night anchored off Las Perlas islands.  Really pretty spot (but no fish live there).  On the way to the anchorage we were able to catch a couple of nice sized dolphin around floating drbris.  There were hundreds and hundreds of little 5 pounders swarming.  You had to get lucky to have a bigger fish get to your bait first.

All in all, a great trip.  Caught some fish in a pretty location, had a great time with great company.

Look at all that bait!

- Capt, Mike Springer