Captain’s Corner: Dave Zalewski

Strong winds, high seas, rain and lightning kept us in port for a week chomping at the bit to get out to sea and experience some of the great summertime fishing that we had just began to experience .We had noticed a decline in the usual number of Spanish mackerel, bonita and barracuda in the month of June which are our primary trolling targets. They came back strongly in July and on most of our trips we were able to target these species on the way to our bottom fishing areas in the 70 to 90 feet depths. Our trips leave the bay out of John’s Pass and we have to travel in a no wake zone for some distance. Lines go out as soon as we reach enter the no wake zone with a #1 planer and 00 or 0 spoon. This practice started some years ago when we observed mackerel striking baitfish in the bay. The no wake speed of about 6 knots is the ideal hardware trolling speed. Our record so far is 18 fish in the box by the time we reached the John’s Pass marker which is one mile from the bridge. We have caught Spanish mackerel, kingfish, bluefish, small gag grouper, jacks, blue runners, ladyfish, lizardfish and trout. Ladyfish go into the live well because they make an excellent bait for live bait slow trolling. The large lizardfish make excellent cut bottom fishing bait. The small ones go into the live well and become “grouper candy”.

Dave Zalewski 460-9893