December 28 2014 Palm Beach Offshore Fishing Report

Me, Matt and Joyce headed offshore for an after Christmas trip. Could not get much to bite other than some random bottom fish. Bait was hard to come by so we pulled the old trolling over the wrecks trick for a Barracuda and landed this guy. Matt's first cuda!

December 20 2014 Palm Beach Offshore Fising Report

Andrew and Carrie headed offshore with me for a quick trip before everyone left for Christmas. Managed a few Yellowtail Snapper and Rudolph the Red Nose Andrew made an appearance. Still no luck on the elusive Sail for Carrie and Andrew. Their time will come though. Seas were very calm for this time of year.

December 7 2014 Palm Beach Offshore Fishing Report

Me, Dad, Julie and Carrie hit the waters for a quick trip for my birthday. Seas were not too bad so we headed offshore and landed a decent King. Was just happy to be out after the Bucks won the Big10 Championship and the celebrations were in full force. Water temps really cooled off over the last few weeks running near 79. We trolled plugs for the King near the beach to make sure Julie got her sea legs. Ran offshore eventually but couldn't find any Dolphin.

October 19 2014 Palm Beach Offshore Fishing Report

Carrie, Andrew and Doug hit the waters before College football games and managed some dolphin on some weeds and a nice Kingfish. Weeds were in abundance but the fish were somewhat scarce. Definitely dropped off from the previous couple of weeks. We also netted a Carrie in the cast net!

October 3 2014 Offshore Fishing Report Palm Beach

I played hooky from work today to take Carrie and her mom fishing. Within 30 minutes of being on the water we had all of the dolphin we could handle! We probably caught about 30 of them before heading in to do some snorkeling. Just happened to find some nice debris and weeds. After snorkeling we did some bottom fishing and we caught a nice Mutton Snapper on a live ballyhoo.

September 21 2014 Offshore Fishing Report Palm Beach

Doug, me and Carrie headed offshore around 830am. We caught a few live ballyhoo by Breakers then headed offshore. Was a pretty slow day but managed some kingfish and bonita. Doug also caught a nice jack while we were looking for bait. Surprised to see all of the ballyhoo.

August 16 2014 Offshore Fishing Report Palm Beach

Carrie and I headed out after the August Super Moon thinking we might have a chance at a Wahoo. Within 30 minutes, Mr. Wahoo did not disappoint!! The flat line started screaming. I grabbed it and then passed off to Carrie and she did the rest! After a 30 minute battle, Carrie brought the hoo close to the boat and i realized it was a monster! Based on the previous ones i caught, I estimated this one to be about 45lbs. BlueSteel's biggest hoo by far! Carrie did a great job reeling it in and didn't panic despite my excitement once I knew it was a wahoo!

August 1 2014 Marathon, Florida Reef Fishing Report

We headed out for one last fishing adventure but found sloppy seas. We decided just to fish the shallow reef. We hooked a bunch of yellowtails and small muttons. Also hooked a bonnethead shark on a freelined ballyhoo. Nothing picture worthy although we did catch 3 yellowtails on a sabiki rig!

July 31 2014 Marathon, Florida Mini Lobster Season Report

We headed out to the same spot on Day 2 but found the spot to be picked over. We caught several but then found some different spots that produced right off the bat and we limited out again! Doug and Slim took MVP awards for best lobsterman and Jot finished in the voting just behind them! All in all Team Ticklestick is getting much better and we are already looking forward to next year! After lobstering I took out Slim and Jot for their first Dive. We went out on the patch reefs near Herman's Hole. They saw a few lobster and a nurse shark but nothing worth spearing. Tyler fishing in about 80' and hooked a nice mutton and some porgies.

July 30 2014 Marathon, Florida Mini Lobster Season Report

We finally figured out this whole lobster thing! We found some great spots on the Gulf Side. Slim nailed a Lionfish with his Hawaii Sling. We did get stopped by the FWC but they were very nice and just keeping an eye on things. I must say Mini Season was not nearly as bad as people made it out to be! Weather was great and only trouble was finding gas.Total lobster count on day one was 36!

July 29 2014 Marathon, Florida Offshore Fishing Report

I took Jillian, Nick and Sonja offshore hoping to find more dolphin. We had Tyler's crew following behind us. We headed to our "spot" from 2013 and sure enough Tyler and Andrew hooked up with some monster Dolphin! We found some small ones but weeds were hard to come by and the birds were playing tricks on us. Tyler's dolphin took free lined dead ballyhoo! We had live bait but the dolphin weren't interested in anything we threw at them.Weighed in about 24lbs and 30 lbs! We did an afternoon trip and caught some cero mackerel on the reef as the sun was setting.

July 28 2014 Marathon, Florida Offshore Fishing Report

Tyler, Doug, Andrew and I headed offshore to find more monster dolphin! We really struggled to find weedlines but finally started to run into some about 15 miles offshore. We then saw a flock of birds diving and found the mother load of small dolphin. They were only hitting live bait so we found some weeds and caught live bait with the sabikis. We were able to boat 5 keeper dolphin although they were only around 24". Still good on the table though! Andrew also speared his first fish under the weed patches! We caught most of the fish about 12-20 miles offshore. We then headed in to grab the rest of the crew to do some snorkeling. Current was very light if any and water was very clear.Doug landed a monster Mutton too on the trusty sardine.

July 27 2014 Marathon, Florida Fishing Report

Team Ticklestick headed down to Marathon for our first mini season. We stayed in Key Colony which was a great place! Will definately be back there next summer. We started off Sunday evening by doing some reef fishing on Jackie Leigh. We caught a couple of yellowtail snapper and some other small snappers and grunts. We just used some frozen sardines and frozen shrimp.No fish pictures as everything was pretty small. Current was basically nonexistent on the reef. We headed back after sunset to do some dock light fishing. We saw a few tarpon but no luck on getting them to bite. We saw several lobster crawling on the grass flats leading us to believe bullynetting is not a bad idea!

July 20 2014 Offshore Palm Beach Fishing Report

It was like deja vu but me, the old man, Matt and Joyce headed out bright and early. We were determined to fight through the bonita for a summer sail however there were huge mats of weeds in 250' out so we couldn't pass that up. Within a few minutes of being out there we hooked a couple of keep dolphin. Just barely keepers at about 21" but since it was my old man's first dolphin we kept them for dinner. We did see a sailfish freejumpin in 400' but could not get him to bite. Seas were a little sloppy to start the day but got dead flat as the morning went on. We fished until about 11am then headed in to call it a day. All in all we ended up with 5 mahi and a 15lb skipjack that mean some Ahi Tuna! Caught the skipjack on a freelined ballyhoo. Caught the dolphin on anything that we through. Water was much clearer today with the SE winds overnight.

July 19 2014 Offshore Palm Beach Fishing Report

Me, the old man, Matt and Carrie hit the water at sunrise in search of a summer sail but we mostly found bonita and more bonita. By 8am we had hooked several, one of which was torn to pieces by a Barracuda. Matt also landed a monster bull shark. We then headed offshore in search of weeds and dolphin. We found several nice patches that held lots of little dolphin. Each patch of weeds produced a few small peanuts then we would move on to the next patch. All in all it was a good day and we headed in to beat the heat. Current was pretty much non existent until we got to the gulfstream which was about 7 miles out. We caught several mahi on topwater, dead bait, and live bait caught on the sabiki. Got some good GoPro footage of the bullshark. Click here for the video. Matts Bull Shark 7-19-2014

July 5 2014 Offshore Fishing Report Palm Beach

Jed, Doug, me and Andrew headed out to try to avoid the bonita. We caught a few of them within minutes of having a line in then decided to head offshore when the bull sharks made another appearance. We ran offshore about 8 miles and started picking up some weeds so we searched and searched until we found the mother load in 800'. We picked up a bunch of little peanuts just under sized. Didn't take any pictures as we were in hot pursuit of trying to get a few bigger fish. The weeds were massive and had a ton of bait under them. The dolphin were eating almost everything we threw at them including live bait that we were catching under the weeds. It rained from 630am until 830am when we finally decided to just head towards the inlet and luckily it ended up being a perfect day and was very calm! No fishing on Sunday this week as Carrie and I headed to Key Largo to do some snorkeling since we could not snorkel with the bull sharks being a menace.

July 4 2014 Offshore Fishing Report Palm Beach

SHARKS! Bull sharks everywhere. Bonita everywhere. Was really a challenge to find weeds this weekend and there were no cobia around the bull sharks surprisingly. Still had a fun day on the water with Carrie, Matt and Joyce. Managed to catch a Kingfish that we let get away after Matt tried to gaff his first fish. We had a few bite offs from the sharks and maybe a king or two but overall we could have caught 100 bonita but gave up after a handful. The sailfish snacks that Matt brought didn't do the trick but its bound to happen soon just from pure luck!

June 28 2014 Offshore Fishing Report Palm Beach

Carrie, Matt and I took out my Uncle Paul (aka Elder Biscuit) for an early morning trip in search for Paul's first ever Mahi. Within a few minutes of dropping a line in around a weedline, we had a small peanut hooked. We ended up catching about 20 small dolphin throughout the day but the big prize of the day was the 26lb Bull Dolphin that we hooked straight out of the inlet in 430' of water. Carrie had hooked up with a big dolphin but it spit the hook so she reeled in quickly and pitched the bait back out to the fish. Sure enough within seconds we had another monster back on the line. She passed the rod over to Elder Biscuit and the fight was on. While battling the dolphin we had numerous boats come over trying to mooch off our area but we were the only ones with an success, at least in that area. They were all trolling and we were pitching dead and cut bait at them. We even had several hooked on Rapala skitterwalk top water lures. Below are some pictures from the day. Conditions were fairly calm with winds picking up from the N/NE (a far cry from the ESE winds NOAA was calling for) as the day went on. Water temps were about 85 and the current was very strong. We also had the looming tropical mischief (future Hurricane Arthur) off the coast but was not yet affecting our weather. Weedlines were very numerous but there were a lot of scattered weeds making it less desirable to troll!

June 22 2014 Offshore Fishing Report Palm Beach

After 2 afternoon trips on Friday and Saturday, Carrie, Jed, Jillian and me headed out around 730am to see if we could have better luck and avoid the bonita's in the morning. Well, we didn't avoid them in fact i think we caught more. We tried looking for dolphin first thing but no luck so we headed in to 100' and within 30 seconds of having a line in we had a bonita hooked. Since it was slow offshore we played with the bobo's and had fun. We did manage a 15lb Amberjack and a 15lb Kingfish which were both good fights on light tackle. Then we headed in to snorkel by Breakers to cap off a fantastic weekend of boating and fishing. Other than not catching a targeted species I could not ask for anything more for a weekend! Conditions on Sunday were choppier than predicted (surprise surprise). Winds were NW and actually somewhat strong. Bluewater started in about 300' and there were a lot of weed patches but they were small. They all held quite a bit of bait but no fish. Here are some pics from the day.