LWI 4/30/16 short trip, kind of fishy

JIMinPB · April 2016

Things came together at the last minute this morning for a fast fishing trip with a neighbor & a friend from Miami. We broke the inlet probably around 9:30ish, maybe a touch later.

On the way out, we saw a boat up on top of the south jetty. A woman was on board & a guy was standing on the jetty with a cell phone in his hand. Shortly thereafter, a couple of tow boat guys showed up, so I figured that he had things in hand.

The wind felt a bit more fresh than had been predicted. A few white caps were seen here & there. The period was much shorter than had been forecast. Seas were not all that big though. Mostly I saw 1-2 with the occasional 3. The drift was slow, like 0.5 knots to the north west. Green water poured out of the inlet, but was met with blue on the outside. One fleet looked to be in about 100-200' from the breakers to the dodge wall. Another looked to be a bit deeper, up by the Juno ledge. Various sizes of flying fish were around here & there, but I didn't see any big schools.

We went south & dropped a few lines on some structure. We were rewarded with a few grunts and a pretty big Toro. We trolled our way through a maze of other boats that were fishing & diving, then someone asked about a kite, so we stopped & I put one up. Maybe 5-10 minutes later, a sail was on the hook. A little tail walking, a couple of jumps, then it was down under the surface for the rest of the fight. The fish was maybe 40" LJL. We managed a clean release, then trolled a bit.

Someone had a 1:00 appointment, so we called it a day early & headed back in. The jetty boat was gone.

The sail hit in about 80 feet off the dodge wall