Tony and his family joined Jose and I for a day of adventure. On a half-day trip, you can visit two maybe three spots that may hold fish. We hit four stops but the first one was the best one. Which just proves the old adage “never leave fish to find fish”, which we did. After landing about a dozen nice-sized spanish (18-20”), we got greedy and went looking for kings, bonita or perhaps baracuda. And found nothing-not even spanish! But we were happy with our catch and a good day was had by all.

Linnea and her friends wanted to go bottom fishing. And we had that in mind as we trolled a couple of spoons out through John's Pass and started catching a few Spanish mackerel. By the time we got to JP MoA, there was plenty of storm activity offshore, so we decided it would be best to troll down the beach and see if we could keep the Spanish thing going. And we did. After an hour or two, Linnea and her friends forgot all about bottom fishing. By radio, we heard from some of the other boats that were farther offshore and they were getting wet so we felt like we made the right decision. Plus, it's bad practice to leave fish to find fish. You don't know that you will find them!

We had a 1/2 day charter last week and came up with a nice run of Spanish mackerel in the first hour of fishing. After that, the bite went cold. We got a nice half-dozen with most fish aroun 18”. Not bad for mid-March. L

For some reason, this summer has been a Bonita summer. We have been blessed to run into lots of Bonita. Some have been on the Pinellas County artificial reefs. And some have been in the Egmont shipping channel. And others have been somewhere in between. Between March and Christmas, we really try to pick enough Spanish mackerel for our client's dinner. Spanish are fun to catch, easy to clean and taste great any way you choose to fix them. But Spanish tend to be small (less than 20") and many customers want to catch "big fish". Well, we don't have a lot of big fish just hanging around. You can get amberjack, red or gag grouper, red snapper and such, but you have to go way offshore to do it. We tend to get clients who book for 4 hours and they don't really want to spend all that time getting to deep waters for big fish. So, we target the Bonita! They are good-sized, fight like a fish twice their size and there have been lots of them this year. They just aren't that good for eating, unless properly prepared.

For the last several weeks, Bonita have been showing up in many places. We fish the Egmont ship channel and there are Bonita along the edges. We fish the Pinellas county aritificial reefs and there are Bonita. We fish the deep water and there are Bonita. Some are willing to go to the trouble to prepare Bonita for the table but most of my clients like the fight they put up. We then release the fish, exhausted but otherwise unharmed.

The Lena family fished with us today to celebrate their son’s 21st birthday. We fished the Egmont ship channel and had a good day as you can see. The Lena family then took their catch to dinner. From hook to table all in one afternoon. Thqnks for fishing with us!