That evening we anchored in a beautiful cove, with very deep steep sides and caught lots of small skipjack casting from the boat, as well as small yellowtail. Sometime after midnight a strong southwest wind came up making it a miserable noisy last night on the boat with a rough ride back to the harbor. We drove over many more schools of bait and their shepherding yellowtails, but decided to drive on through as the idea of drifting in those seas was unappealing. The boat was amazingly dry even while taking steep short waves on the bow quarter. Susan's 30+ inch Black Skipjack ready for release.
We hope to be able to charter SeaFortuna again some day, and won't hesitate to go fishing during the no-fish season of December and January. Here is what we learned about the local fishing in January:
Turn off the funny looking fish markers on the depth sounder so you can see what is
really there, the cartoon fish were so large they block out the returns from large fish near the schools of bait.
Keep a steady watch out for surface wakes of cruising Dorado and shark...be prepared
to cast to them and approach slowly for the cast.
Bring a cast net to catch live bait so you can target the huge grouper that roam along the cliff walls at high tide.