Today my fishing buddies were the Gary (the dad), Deryck, and Matthew Dietz, a father and two sons team fro Illinois for a full day of fishing. The water temperature is finally back in the zone for Mahi and Kingfish and the recent 10 day blow seems to have blown the Cobes through again for a second year in a row. It was a beautiful day from the start and the pogies were back on the beach in large schools scattered from the pier all the way south to Patrick Air Force Base. It took only one toss of the net to fill the well with pogies and off to 8A we went.

We arrived at 8A at about 9:00 AM on a flat cal sea with clear skies and I splashed the pogies and it only took about 40 minutes to stash a limit of 8 king between 6 and 15 pounds in the fish box. We had double and triple headers with the fun and pandemonium that ensues. I personally think the kingfish is the perfect charter boat fish, they're plentiful and reliable most of the year and properly cleaned and prepared they are excellent table fare.

The team today had already laid out the challenge that they really wanted to get into some Mahi today so after filling our limit of kings I headed northeast and we splashed out Mahi baits starting in about 160' northeast of the 20 mile weather buoy. We trolled to the northeast until our first Mahi hit in 216' of water and we continued our capture of Mahi for the rest of the day ending the day with eight total between 8 and 18 pounds. All of our Mahi were caught on naked ballyhoo either skipping on chin-weighted (1/8 to 1/2 oz), 5 line spread, between 216' and 237' on a .3 degree temp break either side of a scattered weed line. We also lost a number of fish including one triple header.

We finished the day with a pleasant ride home in the 1-2' seas at 30 knots knowing full well that there were a Mahi and Kingfish dinners in the Dietz family's future.

Final tally for the day:
8 Kingfish between 8 and 15 pounds
8 Mahi-Mahi beween 6 and 18 pounds. 1-18, 2-15, 2-12, the rest under 10 pounds.