May 9-10: Big jacks, a few sharks and a nice snook

Please remember to visit my website at www.CorporateRetreatCharters.com.





Scott and Dylan (he's the little one) came down from Meridian, Mississippi for a couple days of fishing in Stuart and Jensen Beach. The main target was sharks since this was Dylan's birthday present, so we headed up the beach in search of some spinners, black tips, bulls and whatever else we could find.
On the way up, I saw a big school of jacks swimming by, about 100 yards off the boat. So, we turned around, got in front of them and tossed out a Sebile Splasher. For those of you who haven't seen one of these Splashers before, you have to see the water this thing moves when you pop it. Amazing.

The lure landed in front of the school, he popped it twice and then fought to stay in the boat the next 20 minutes as that jack too off.

The 24-pounder securely in the boat and ready to be used for bait, we continued out trek up the beach, passing three or four more schools of the big jacks.
At the shark spot -- Shark Territory, as Dylan kept exclaiming -- I cut a slab off the jack and tossed it out while the carcass hung in the water right behind the boat. Within about 30 minutes there was a BIG shark about 40 yards off the boat doing ever-tightening circles. It looked like a lemon shark, and ran about 7 feet long. He lined up behind the boat, in the chum line and right over one of the baits, but another boat came blowing up from behind it and we never saw the shark again.
We redeployed the baits and finally got a hook-up (between boat traffic) with a jumping, twirling spinner shark. I set Dylan on the leaning post, kneeling and facing back so he could reel on the fish with the rod in a rod holder. He reeled a couple times but the shark broke off. We put more bait out and hooked another shark, this one much smaller, who was content to just splash on the surface and make quick runs. He eventually broke off too.

The next day the water temp dropped 15 degrees to 61 (thank you cold water upwelling) so we ran all the way back down the beach to the flats and fished for snook. We got a couple real good hits on the big greenies we had and managed to get this one to the boat. Dylan reeled it all by himself, while I held the rod through the jumps and runs.
The cold water should have moved on to the flats by now and shut down the bite for a week or two, but it was nice to get in some good fishing before that happened!

May 1 -- Offshore permit out of Stuart

Please check out my website for more photos and fishing reports, http://www.corporateretreatcharters.com/.

The day started with my boss (Mike), the Yamaha Southeastern Saltwater Promotions Director (Mike D.) and myslef (Mike R.) fishing the Sailfish Point flats. After about an hour of seatrout (up to 6 pounds or so), jacks and bluefish (lots of bluefish), we decided to head offshore to see if we could run into a school of permit that was in about 40 feet.

Grabbed some crabs and headed east! When we got to the spot, we found more barracuda than anything else -- until Mike spotted a mass of dark backs coming our way. Mike D. was the first to throw his crab and it was immediately sucked in. Mike and I sat back and watched him fight the fish on tackle that was far too light for what we were doing. And we had quite the fun time doing it!

After about 20 minutes we pulled the 35-pounder into the boat and went back to what we were doing. In the meantime, a 29-foot Everglades pulled up and anchored on the rock pile we were fishing. They had no idea what they were doing and, between dropping their shrimp to the bottom and reeling up empty hooks, we were pulling 30-plus pound permit from right under their hull. If they had looked up they would have seen about 300 permit mooning and shining all around their boat.

I got my chance when I cast my crab about 10 feet from the Everglades and hooked up, working hard to keep the hard-running fish out of the other guy's anchor line. Mike D. fed a decent-sized mutton snapper a crab and then threw it back before we had a chance to filet it for dinner.

Then Mike and Mike D. socked into a doubleheader, leaving me to snap pictures and wait for a fish to come close enough to grab it. We ended up with 5 fish on 8 crabs and 4 permit, all 0ver 25 pounds.

All in all, one heck of a great day offshore. And it's only going to get better!!