Cubera 2012 Finale

I have no idea what happened this month. Traditionally we have a great Cubera bite in September but everyone seemed to want to fish in August this year. I’m not sure why this is especially with a full moon coming up this weekend. The congregations of fish have done the bulk of their spawning ritual and now they are on the feed trying to recover their strength after their yearly ordeal. Oh well, it is what it is!

Jorge had already booked his second trip for this season. Devon was out of commission for this run, so I phoned up my buddy, “Uncle Al”, to come work the mate position. Al is Devon‘s uncle, which is where his nickname “Uncle Al” comes from. We met up at the usual time and Jorge arrived solo on this occasion. He brought along his own rod and reel, a nice bent butt with an International 70 loaded with 150# Power Pro. A bit of overkill but if he is more comfortable with his own gear, he is welcome to bring it.

We turned The BEAST out and made our way to grab a few quick Hardtails for backup bait. That happened with relative ease and in short order the Zuke 300’s were running for our Cricket patch. Although Uncle Al and I are, for lack of better terms, a senior crew, we managed to grab enough bugs in a reasonable time. Uncle Al may have a few years on Devon but he is still a bug snatching maniac. Since Jorge also brought along a custom jigging rod with 65# braid on a nice shiny Shimano Stella reel, we decided to give the “Grunt & Sweat” wreck a tryout.

 We arrived at the G&S and made several drops but only had 1 or 2 bumps and lost a couple of the jig hooks. I made the decision to try another wreck but the same thing seemed to be the case at that area as well. OK! We headed south to Nastyville and made 1 or 2 drops with the jigs. There was nothing doing on the jigs that night. Darkness was still about 45 minutes away, but I told Al to go ahead and drop a cricket. The sonar was pretty much blank as we made several drifts but as the darkness settled in the screen became more active. Each pass showed more and more marks. Boom! Al yells that we have a bite but Jorge was not on his game and before he could get to the rod it came unglued. Another couple of passes and the bait gets crashed again. This time I cranked down on the fish and as Jorge got to the rod, the tipped popped up signaling another miss. We kept making passes sliding deeper and shallower and I decided to stay around the drift that produced the first 2 bites. The sonar screen was lit up like the “Jones’” neighborhood at Christmas. The next bite was so fast that the rod doubled over and snapped to attention so fast no one had a chance to react. Jorge was on station at the rod when the next bite came. Bite… let go… drop back… bite… let go… hold… a few tense seconds and Bada Bing! The line comes tight and the rod is bending toward the water when, you guessed it, once again the fish came unpinned. What the H? These must be smaller “buck” snapper because we lost two baits totally, one bait came up covered in fang punctures, and this last one was almost torn in half.

 The searching for active fish was over. Adjusting the drifts was easy because, surprisingly, we had the whole area to ourselves that night. I made an adjustment that worked out perfectly and I had now honed in on the same drift line that had been producing the bites. A couple of short, uneventful drifts went by. I had them pegged and at this stage in the game there was no need to make long drifts. On the next drift I saw the active fish on the sonar and told Jorge to stand guard. Kaplooey! This was not a bite like we had been having. This was Big Mama! She bent the rod tip to the water and was stripping drag. That was a feat in itself because 2 drifts earlier I checked his drag and I couldn’t pull the 150# braid off the reel with my hands. OMG Bro! This fish may break our boat record of 76#’s. About 6 or 7 minutes into the fight and Jorge figures he has the fish off the bottom far enough so he backs off on the drag about ¼. After another 2 to 3 minutes and 2 more solid runs, the line goes limp. NO WAY! Yes way! She is gone! When we brought the terminal rig to the surface we did a quick inspection to find that Big Mama had straightened out our 4X strength hooks. She was obviously hooked up solid. This was the classical “damned if you do and damned if you don’t” scenario on drag settings. If we wouldn’t have had the drag tight she would’ve taken us to the bottom and cut us off. Having the drag a bit too tight can cause other failures, as was our case. Loosening the drag after moving the fish well off the bottom was the correct thing to do but the damage was already done. All I can say is that this fish was a behemoth.

 The BEAST fell so quiet that you could’ve heard a mouse peeing on cotton. Several minutes passed and then we discussed what happened in detail. We came to the conclusion that you can’t win ‘em all. We made several more drifts and Jorge began losing focus allowing his bait to drag on the bottom, hanging up 3 rigs and losing the lead. He was totally dejected at this point and was ready to call it a night. Hold on! The sonar is going quiet and the bite has slowed down but I had a good feeling. C’mon Jorge, one more drift. I don’t know why I had that feeling but I’m glad he said OK. About 1 minute into the last drift and the rod tip bumps. Jorge remains calm and the tip bumps again. Easy does it! The 3rd bump and the rod tip pulls down past the gunnels, and Jorge makes 5 or 6 hard cranks on the reel. Hooked up! This was our average respectable fish and Jorge took the battle over and won this fight.
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Jorge thanked me for insisting on that last drift and we called it a night. We went 1 for 6 but we had action through most of the night. I’ve replayed that night over and over in my mind and came to some conclusions. There was nothing much I would’ve done differently to catch that big fish, but I have come up with some ideas to eliminate those missed hook ups.

The season will probably draw to an end after this weekend’s moon phase. With no plans for this week, Devon and I will be putting up the gear next week and turning our focus towards live baiting for Dolphin, Sails and Kings. That was apparently our Cubera 2012 Finale’. It’s all good! A fitting end with the big fish that got away. Keep looking over your shoulder, Big Mama, because we’re coming after you again next year!

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

Family fun!

I got a call from my Brother-in-law, Michael, who wanted to set up a day to go fishing with his daughters and their friend. He wanted to get his girls out for an afternoon of fishing before they went back to school. I told Mike it wasn‘t a problem and we set up an afternoon run. Afternoon trips can be tough during August with daytime temps reaching 90+ degrees but he said that Berkeley doesn’t do mornings very well. I told him I was sure we could put them on some big fish. OK, let’s do 3 PM to dark. The night before the trip, Mike called and said he had to hurry out of town on business the next day but the girls and their friend were still anxious to fish with Uncle Capt. Jim.

My nieces arrived on time and we were ready and waiting. Berkeley, Paris and their friend Greg were very excited. We loaded their gear and I fired up The BEAST. As we headed down the channel I took that time to refresh my Uncle status with my nieces and I also got to interrogate Greg as well. It turns out he is a very nice kid! Sorry Greg, I can’t negate that protective fatherly instinct when it comes to the girls in my family. During this time, we also caught plenty of Hardtails for bait and the group was already a pile of smiles. After we loaded about 2 dozen Blue Runners into the wells, I pony’d up the Zukes and made the run offshore.

Since Greg and Berkeley are attending UCONN they don’t get much chance to catch big fish up there. I told them that Devon and I would definitely target some big fish that will test their will. We arrived at our “Grunt & Sweat” wreck and immediately started dropping baits. The current was light and conditions were great. Devon was working a speed jig for them and the live Hardtail was down below drawing attention. A minute or so into the drift and the speed jig connects. Berkeley took the rod and it was game on. She fought that fish to the boat in a true angler fashion. It was a smaller Amberjack but more importantly, the skunk was off the boat. We slid this “eater” into the fish box.

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Devon’s speed jig got tapped again only minutes into the next drift and Paris, the smallest of the group, jumped up and ran to take the rod. She is so tiny that I was a bit worried that we might have to hold on to her so we didn’t have to fish her out of the drink. No way! She manhandled the smaller Almaco Jack to the surface and as quickly as we had started we had fish #2 in the boat. We released this beauty to grow up.

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We had bites on the Blue Runners but for some reason we were not connecting with solid hook ups. We missed a couple of fish. I think the fish were a bit too small to eat the sizeable baits we were dropping. Well… that’s my story and I’m sticking to it! At this time the only staying hooked up were the fish that ate the speed jigs, but they were the smaller kind. Another nice Almaco (25 lb) ate the speed jig. I don’t remember who caught it because the action was quick and at times they were tag teaming the fish. Once again, we missed another on the live bait. C’mon… really? We reset again and on this drift the sonar screen was showing me that the big fish had awakened and were ready to play. The Hardtail was taken and this was a better fish. Oh boy was it! Double! The speed jig got whacked again and hooked up another small AJ but the Runner had enticed a nice 44 lb fish into eating.

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The live bait was doing the job now and Greg was into a good fish. Greg was doing pretty well at raising the fish when suddenly it grew about 200 pounds. Greg thought he had lost the fish but remarked that there was still something there. I laughed. Yeah, the head! You just got sharked. When he brought the remains to the boat we could see that it was a very big “Guard Dog” that had been keeping watch on us. He had waited to pick out his perfect sized fish. A done deal in one bite!

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The next fish just piled onto the Blue Runner and was trying with every fiber of its being to get loose, and there was plenty of fiber to this one. I believe all 3 of them took a turn on this one. The fish was big and it took them a good bit of time. We finally saw color about 75’ below. Holy Guacamole, that’s a nugget! We put this one on the scale and she pulled it down to 75 pounds. Nice fish. Devon suggested that we release this big breeder since we already had a couple in the box to eat. Everybody agreed and Devon vented her and tossed her overboard. We watched her swim away into the blue.

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Everyone was ready to take a break so I asked Devon to set out a trolling spread and we would see if we could get some Mahi or something else. We pulled the baits for a short time when I saw a flock of birds working and for the next 35-45 minutes we kept getting double and triple knockdowns and hookups by large Bonito. I worked our way inshore hoping to get a Wahoo on the down rod. We missed a couple of bites and right before dark the rod sounded off. All right! Berkeley woman’d up and took the rod. We were anticipating a Wahoo after the second good run and then we saw color about 40’ out. Rats! It’s a 20-pound Caribbean Spotted Mackerel. Oh well, that ‘Cuda was a good fight, anyway.

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Daylight was gone so I turned the nav lights on and pointed the bow toward the barn. We had boated 4 Amberjack, 2 Almaco Jacks, 10 Bonito, and 1 Barracuda in about 4 hours. They were a bit tired but all I saw were their smiles. I really had a great time fishing with my nieces, Berkeley and Paris. I would love to do it again, soon! Oh yeah… you too, Greg!

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