February 8, 2014 Report

Another gorgeous day today and David and Ashok were in for a half day. In-spite of the weather, today was a challenging day. We had only frozen bait, no bait shops in South Dade had live bait, tons of boat traffic and unfortunately, rude boaters/anglers on the water. With no time to look for live pilchards, we started bonefishing but it was slow seeing only one fish in the hour we allocated for bonefish. Anchoring in a favorite creek of mine we drop one bait in and seconds later it gets slammed and lose the big grouper to the rocks. Seconds later a boat anchors 100' from us. Geeze. Drop another bait, SLAM, lose another big grouper to the rocks. Another boat anchors 100' on my other side. Getting REALLY crowded. Pull anchor, leave the scene. We anchor in another small channel I like and almost immediately get bait and snappers behind the boat. The frozen bait is barely staying on the hook but we manage a nice snapper only to have a barracuda slice half of it off right next to the boat. We started landing some fish and getting some solid hits when a boat runs right up our chum slick, spooks everything behind the boat and buzzes us 20' to our side at full speed. Ashok eventually had his hands full with about a 5lb specimen that put up a fight on 8lb tackle along with some smaller fish. Capt. Mo Estevez www.NewDawnCharters.com