El Nastyville!

We fished for the Cubera’s again this past Sunday night, finally getting Paul Storti and his friends, Luis, Brendon and Mike out after several weather cancellations. Everything went well on the lobster patches and Devon quickly collected our 12 bugs needed for the night. We made our way to the Yellowtail area and found that there was no current and the chum was slowly dropping straight down off the transom. We did manage to wrangle a few legal Yellowtail though. As darkness fell over us, we pulled the hook and made our way out to El Nastyville!
As we approached the area I began searching for the big Snappas! Oh yeah! They’re still here! I located a nice school of them and one of Devon’s good friends came out to meet us. We were the only 2 boats out there. He shadowed us the entire night and we fished within shouting distance of each other all evening. It’s cool. There is no secret as to the general area that we fish. Besides, he tossed me a pack of smokes, since I had left mine at the dock. Thanks again, Smitty!
No current, only a wind drift, so I set up a drift track and we dropped a pair of bugs. Our first drift was off by a considerable distance. No bites and only a few fish being marked on the bottom machine, so we curtailed this drift and I headed back to the start point and readjusted. We dropped the bugs again and we were on the money this time. “I’m marking fish, get ready!” I told Paul and Luis, the first anglers on the rods. Whoop, There it is! Luis’ rod doubles over and we are on. I never get tired of the bewildered look these anglers have as they feel the raw power of El Nasty. Luis worked hard and brought the fish up, Devon did his signature gill grab and put the fish on the deck. The 45 pounds of Cubera Snapper landed with a resounding thud and the 4 guys were excited and exchanging high fives.

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With the cockpit buzzing in amazement, we pulled the other line and motored up for another drop. Paul and Mike are on the rods as we dropped another pair of lobster. We noticed Paul’s rod twitch and BAM. Game on! Within seconds Mikes rod doubles over as well. DOUBLE! Not for long though, as Mike’s fish comes unpinned. Paul gets his fish to the gunnel and we pull it aboard for a photo op. A beautiful 20 pound specimen that we quickly released and with a few kicks of his tail, he was gone.

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2 for 3 bites and we are on a roll. Well, not really. The next several drifts and Brendon and Mike are on the rods. They are snake bit. Mike must have had some bad JuJu on him this night. He went through 5 or 6 baits, getting bites and losing fish. Meanwhile, we are working a speed jig and Paul hooks up a 15# Horse Eye Jack. Got to love it! It’s fishing right?
Once again, Mikey has a miss. Mike was getting really frustrated now. We dropped the partially crushed lobster down again and Bada bing, Mikey gets hooked up. This fish is on solid. His enthusiasm and determination kicks in and makes him oblivious to the fact that he has pulled the rod from the rod holder and stuck the butt under the handrail. He thinks this fish is a monster because he can’t lift the rod tip. I saw what was happening and tried to help him. He wouldn’t relinquish the pressure to ease the rod out but rather pryed the rod butt out, along with 2 grooves of the gel coat. I thought he was going to bend the dang aluminum butt. Oh well, the fish is still there and Mikey finally wipes the bad JuJu off of himself as a small fish comes aboard. A 16# fish, the smallest we’ve caught this season, but for Mike, it was a trophy Cubera. Sort of!

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Brendon’ luck wasn’t much better than Mike’s. He was having trouble too. For some reason his baits had been ignored all this time. Not a bite, not even a tap. Finally, he makes the grade and gets hooked up on a fish and completes the task. Thud… a 30 pounder hits the deck.

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We missed a few more fish as we ran out of Lobster bait. Smitty called us to let us know he was bagging it for the night and relayed that the stats for him were Cubera 3 - Smitty 0. WOW! We fished a couple more drifts with some finfish baits but the Nasty’s didn’t want to play the game, with these inferior baits. Selective feeding for sure. We packed it in with our 2 fish/boat limit and headed for the barn. 12 lobster baits scored 13 bites, so our tally was 4 for 13. Once again, we lost 2 massive fish that we just couldn’t stop. I don’t believe we are fishing anything that was decidedly different than Smitty was doing that night, but our results were definitely better. Hmmmm?!?…Unless it was that extra gallon of MoJo we put in the bottom paint on The BEAST.
Capt. Jim
The BEAST
305-233-9996
beastcharters@aol.com
www.beastcharters.com

Miami Monster Cubera

The weather was rougher than NOAA had forecasted this weekend, but Devon and I managed to get 2 trips out anyway. As we were preparing the boat on Saturday afternoon, one of our Dock neighbors asked if we were going out. “Yes, for Cubera, why?” I asked. He said “It is not good out there!” I wasn’t worried, after all, fishing in lumpy seas is the main reason why I bought my 33’ WorldCat.
Our trip Saturday was a repeat customer from the Saturday before. Yes siree, George is hooked, but this time he brought Mike and Carlos instead of Santi. They arrived a bit late and we unleashed The BEAST. The winds were brisk and the seas a bit bigger than we had hoped for. At our lobster spots, we found cloudy water and visibility was less that 10 feet. That makes for tough buggin‘! Devon is an excellent free diver and collecting crawfish is usually easy for him, but not on this day. 90 minutes and 3 locations later, we only had 4 lobster. They just weren’t there! Great, wonderful… crap! We did manage to catch a half dozen Bar Jacks while Devon was in the water.
We bagged that part of our bait collection and headed for the Yellowtail spot. We had the winds pushing against the current. The Tails were not willing to play into our game plan either but the Speedos came up thick. Mike and Carlos worked on Speedos and Devon and George kept trying for the Y-tails. I dropped a rig to the bottom and, BAM, up comes a 27 inch Black Grouper that ate a dead Silverside. I tossed it in the fish box. The sun setting now, we decided to go with what we had, 4 bugs, 3 legal Y-tails, 6 Bar Jacks, and a butt load of Speedos.
We made the run to the Cubera and began hunting them down. We located them deeper than the week before. I motored into position for the first drift and we dropped our baits. Carlos and George were up first. In less than 2 minutes, KABOOM, Carlos’ rod doubles over! He is in the fight of his life. At first he was pumped up, but his fish was giving him BIG trouble. Carlos got a second wind and yelled “You’re coming up!” I think I heard a muffled Cubera voice from down below say “Yeah right, like hell I am!” This tug of war went on for longer than most other Cubera battles and at least twice, Carlos was about ready to give up. We knew for sure that this had to be a good fish and Carlos was finally gaining on it. At last, we got the lead to the boat and Devon grabbed the leader. The fish went under the boat and around the lower unit. Devon scrambled back to the dive platform and grabbed it. Devon let’s out a yell, “Oh my God!” He’s straining as he gets the fish out of the water and up and over the transom. THUD! All types of words and phrases were being uttered. I remember distinctly, George blurting out “Holy Jesus… Mother of Pearls! Whatever that means? This wasn’t a good fish, my friends, this was a Miami MONSTER. Comments were buzzing around the cockpit, as well as guesses on the weight. We realized that the Boga Grip only goes to 60 pounds. Wait! I have a digital scale that I use to weigh fish during tournaments and it has good accuracy. We hooked it up and Devon and George teamed up to lift it off the deck. The scale settles at 74.5 pound. Holy Jesus… Mother of Pearls! Devon and I have been trying to break our 50# boat record but we never expected to best that mark by almost 25 pounds. See, it just goes to show you it’s not a fairy tale, there are sea monsters. Pretty work, Carlos!

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The rest of the trip is an adrenaline blur. The Cubera’s were snappin’. They were hitting everything we put down, on every drift. We went on to catch 7 more, fish between 25 and 35 pounds, releasing all but the monster and one other floater. George has the hang of it, catching 4 himself. At 10:30 PM, the bite shut down as if someone had flipped a switch. We packed it in after 2 more fruitless drifts. I pointed The BEAST to the west and headed home. At the dock we were buzzing again and George said he was going to call me early this week, to possibly book again this week. He’s hooked… a Cuberoin addict!

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As I am writing this I just got a call from George. He said that they took the fish by Crook & Crook on US1 and weighed it on their IGFA scales. It weighed a touch under 76 ¼ pounds on their scales.

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Sunday night, Dave came, solo, to fish with us. He’s an English transplant who loves to fish speed jigs. He brought 3 of his nice jigging rods and a bag full of speed jigs of all types. His goal was to catch a Cubera on a speed jig… at night.
We turned The BEAST loose and we headed out for bait. What a difference a day can make. The seas were better than Saturday and the visibility on the reef was excellent. We were very relieved as the bugs had returned to our favorite spot and we grabbed our 12 Lobster in short order. As we headed south to fish for Yellowtail, we were comfortably calm in knowing that we had enough ’primo’ baits, regardless of the baitfish bite. The Y-tails were non-compliant once again, but the Speedos came. I quickly caught a dozen of them and Dave and Devon teamed up to boat 3 Cero Mackerel and a large Bonito. We pulled the hook early, not waiting for dark, since Dave could fill the time, jigging.
We arrived on the Cubera spot and I checked things out. The fish were in the same vicinity as the night before. Dave worked his jig and quickly caught a Horse Eye Jack. The game plan this night was to drop one live bait and let Dave work his jigs. 35 seconds into the first drift and the bug gets crushed. Fish on Dave! He jumps on the rod and brings up a head. Sharked! A huge bite mark and the fish is gone behind the gills.

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The current is mild and the fish are scattered out so the drifts are longer. Bam! Dave’s jig gets hit and he wrestles up another Horse Eye Jack. Next drift and the bug gets taken again and Dave is into a nice fish. Yahoo! A 40 pounder slaps the deck. We put this fish into the box because we couldn’t get a good release on it. We decided at this point that we would release all but possibly one more small one.

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The night went on with non stop action. Dave jigged up a 10# Kingfish and missed or lost several other bumps. I was amazed that these jigs even work well at night. Suddenly, about 9:45 PM he gets hooked up on the jig. “Aw, another Horse Eye” he says! As he gets the fish to where I can barely make it out in the water, the live bait rod doubles over. Now he’s perplexed, being the only angler and 2 fish on. Knowing what eats Lobster out there, he hands me his jigging rod to finish off the Jack and takes the fish on the bait rod. Well looky there! As the fish on the jig makes a circle and comes into the spreader light, and there it is, not a Horse Eye Jack, but instead a 25 # Cubera on a speed jig. Dave works the other Cubera up and it’s a respectable 30# fish. After a few quick photos, we revived and released them. The bigger one takes off quickly but the smaller fish is a floater, so we fish it out of the water and toss it in the fish box. Now, at our boat limit, we decided that anymore caught would be quickly photo’d and dispatched back in the water. Good plan and it worked.

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We ran out of Lobster and the fishes appetites had slowed down only a bit but we called it a night. On the ride back to the barn, Devon and I recapped our weekend and Dave plugged in his ear buds on his I-phone, relaxing to his music on a beautiful moonlit night. He deserved it, after single handedly working over 7 Cubera’s from 25 to 40 pounds, a Cubera head, 2 Horse Eyes, and a Kingfish and working a speed jig for hours. Good job Dave!

Capt. Jim
The BEAST
305-233-9996
beastcharters@aol.com
www.beastcharters.com

Fast and Furious Cubera!

Tropical Storm Hanna… Hurricane Ike… Good grief, give us a break here in South Florida! We have an uncontrollable NEED to go fishing. The weather has definitely put a damper on our ocean outings. We have had very few comfortable fishing days in the last several weeks. With several weather pending Cubera trips on the books, and the window of opportunity for Cubera Snapper closing, I have been glued to the computer and TV looking for favorable updates.

We had trips scheduled but Ike was breathing down our neck. With hurricane preps to take care of, I called the people booked for Saturday and Sunday and we all agreed to bag the trips. However, on Saturday morning I was awakened by a phone call from George, telling me to check the weather and call him back. The weather window for that night showed E winds at 5-10 knots and seas 2’ or less, so I called Devon to make sure he could mate that night. He said “Let’s do it!” so I called George back and we set up to meet at 3PM.

George, Santi, Devon, and I arrived at the dock within minutes of each other, exchanged introductions, and prepared for the evenings outing. We unleashed The BEAST and were off. Hopes were high, and George was very excited and vocal about this night. I throttled up and we were off. As we left the Bay and broke out onto the reefs we were pleased to see flat seas and light winds. We pulled up and let Devon get in the water to dive up some Cubera candy. Apparently the rough seas and weather systems had pushed the Lobster somewhere else because he was in the water for an hour and a half and only caught 5. Oh Boy! Not Good! We pow-wow’d for a few minutes and decided to go get some Yellowtail. We ran to our normal spot and anchored. The current was ripping and we only got a few sub legal ’Tails and tossed them back. I made a move to another spot where we managed to get about 6-8 decent fish. George couldn’t contain his excitement any longer and wanted to go with what we had. I was skeptical of the bait situation.

Darkness upon us, we headed out for the big “Snappa’s”. I located several small, scattered groups of them but nothing like they were. Now I’m thinking, “Really not good!”. We set up a drift to intercept a group of these fish and Devon dropped 2 bugs. George brought along his Penn 80 standup outfit and harness. His bait hit the bottom and Santi’s bait was a second or two behind him. George’s eyes lit up as a Cubera engulfed his bug 3 seconds later and it was Game On, Boys! About 5 seconds later, Santi;s rod bends over. Got a double going!!! Not for long as Santi pulls the hook on his fish. George is in amazement. He’s buckled in, the rod is bent over and he just can’t believe the power of these fish. He worked the fish to the boat and Devon flopped a nice 29# Cube onto the deck.

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We set up for our next drift and once again George got a bug on his line but Santi opted to conserve and use a bait fish. In less than a minute, George is hooked up again but it was short lived. This fish was a monster, taking 30#’s of drag. Unstoppable! In less than a minute this fish was gone. All the terminal tackle was intact except for 5’ of leader and the hooks. The remaining leader told the story. This big fish had rocked him. Some of these fish are big and some are dumb but never will they be both. In their world, it’s hard to get big, if you are dumb!

Needless to say we made another drift through these fish and once again, George had bug bait and Santi got the fish bait. I’m not sure why that kept happening? Once again, a decent fish shows its taste for Lobster. This time George works the fish with the Penn 80 drag hammered down to full. Full drag with a standup harness and he stopped that fish cold this time. He worked the fish to the surface and a respectable 36# fish goes on ice.

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As we make the run back to my drift start point, I swung wide to keep from continuously running over the top of these fish. As I am swinging through the deeper water the bottom machine lights up like a Christmas tree. Holy ----! Everyone stared at the depth finder with gaping eyes! “Let’s work this school.“ I told them. We made 3 drifts and no takers. Hmmm. It was pretty obvious that feeding was not on their minds.

I went back to our feeding fish and interjected that Santi should get the last bug for bait. 2 drifts and Santi’s bug is untouched. I told Santi that we’ve never had a bug make it through 3 drifts. Bada bing! The 3rd drift was a charm. Santi was hooked up, but once again, not for long. George was baited up with the largest bait fish in the well and soon was hooked up to another monster fish. OMG! His drag was hammered down to full and this fish managed to rock him too. These fish had to be larger than our biggest 50# fish this year. You just can’t translate into words, the power of these fish!

The bites were less often now, but they continued to feed. The fish were taking the baits with less vigor and many baits were surfacing, crushed or mangled. Then suddenly the bite turned off. Perfect timing as we only had 1 live bait left and it was time to pack it in. The swells were beginning to roll in. It appeared we timed this trip perfectly, taking advantage of this brief lull. The action was fast and furious for the first 90 minutes, then tapered off rapidly. The tally for the night was 2 Cubera of 29 and 36 pounds, out of 9 bites. George and Santi were spent, but enthusiastically said that they want to go again this weekend if the weather is good, and I have an opening. Not a problem!

Fishing for BIG fish must be akin to smoking crack… try it once and your hooked!

Capt. Jim
The BEAST
305-233-9996
beastcharters@aol.com
http://www.beastcharters.com/