January 5, 2017

On Thursday, January 5, we had a great trip thanks to our good friend, Captain Mario, who always gives us trips when his boat is not available. Our guests this day included Ana, her daughter, and her boyfriend, Ana fishes the waters off Fort Lauderdale regularly,  and she knows what to expect. Ana had one fish on her mind to bring in on this trip – that was the elusive  Mahi Mahi.

Knowing that this Mahi Mahi might be a long shot, we decided to slow troll live Ballyhoo to target our Dolphin fish. The conditions were great for this style of fishing, the water was flat calm and there was little to no current. We dragged four Ballyhoo on large spinning gear, 8500 pens with 20-30 stand up rods – my personal favorite gear.  We fished for about an hour with no action, watching the live bait very carefully, looking for any movement on the surface. After two hours without getting a bite, our patience paid off and we received a special on our first bite of the day., I’ll bet you can guess what the fish was, and of course, it was Ana’s Mahi Mahi. Two of the four rods went off with Mahi, but we only managed to bring in one of the two. Ana was yelling with excitement, so pleased to catch her desired fish – and on the first bite. This image of Ana’s beautiful daughter with her first Mahi Mahi captures the moment.

Later, we headed offshore for some deep drop action, to target the Black Bell Rose fish. Ana was familiar with these from her past experience fishing with Captain Mario. The Black Bell Roses are a very tasty fish, but due to their small size it, only a few Rosies are caught when each drop is made. As we finished our drops and caught our fill of Rosies, the sun began to set. Ana asked if we could watch the beautiful sunset from our offshore view. Of course I agreed – the conditions were perfectly calm, and it was a great way to end the adventure on yet another great trip aboard the Good Hit.

Check out Ana’s Review on Trip Advisor or Click Here 

January 6, 2017

On Friday, January 6, we had a late afternoon trip with Avon and his entire family. Due to our success the previous day, we decided to pull the live Ballyhoo again with the large spinning gear – as I have mentioned, it’s my favorite style of fishing, I have had amazing success when conditions are slow and I am always eager to see the catch.

We also had a guest expert aboard, our good friend, Andrew, who is is known as a live Ballyhoo specialist. So with confidence high, and a well full of live “Hoos,” we began our adventure. We trolled south in 120 feet of water with the same flat calm conditions of the day before. Dragging live bait in flat calm conditions allows you to cover more area of water and this presents the Ballyhoo very well on a slow troll. We started fishing at 4 p.m. on that Friday, and by 4:50, from out of the blue came our first bites with three of our four rods off at the same time  – we were Hooked Up again! This time the fish were all Sailfish – they looked like a wolf pack jumping our small Ballyhoo school. As we were hooking two of the three Sailfish, suddenly our drags on our pen 8500s began to scream, creating pure excitement on the Good Hit!

As we settled in our rookie anglers for the two fish, we cleared the lines and got ready for the fight. We positioned our anglers and began gaining line on the reels when one of the fish crossed lines with another, burning the line off. That was fine because we were still tight with another large Sailfish which we were able to catch in just under 20 minutes. We took some photos and made a quick release of the big fish.All the excitement aboard had made a great trip and the Good Hit had struck again!