By Capt. Nestor Alvisa
Hooked on Flamingo Charter
HookedonFlamingo.com • 786.387.2443
As we enter September and October we get into the last couple weeks of Summer and we start looking forward to the days ahead with cooler air and water temperatures of Fall . During the month of September my days in are very numbered as I Usually spend more time offshore and on the reef during this month. On most of our Mahi trips we are mostly running and gunning looking for birds, seaweed patches, or any debris we can find out in the ocean.
Once we find our object that is holding the mahi, my anglers will pitch out either a bucktailjigs or a live pilchard that will more often than not get turned down by a school of mahi. When fishing the reef with my clients we will typically go with most reef programs that everyone goes by. We first start by anchoring up on a section of a reef, we then put chum in our chum bag and let the chum do the work as well let the yellowtail snapper come up to the chum and get comfortable before we start catching them. Once we are ready to catch them silversides, ballyhoo strips or squid chunks will work great.
On the few days I do fish in Flamingo during this month. We still find plenty of snook, redfish, tarpon and tripletail around the beach and creek mouths. On my days out my clients will usually be casting swim baits, live mullet or shrimp under popping corks. On flat days I’ll still try to venture out to any nearby rock pile or structure and give the permit a try as well.
As we move into October we’ll start noticing a small temperature drop in the evenings and lower highs in air temperature during the day. Our water temperature will start to cool down a bit as well and we’ll start seeing more signs of bait and migrating fish starting to work into our waters following the bait migrations. Most of October, I’ll spend my days fishing Biscayne Bay. It’s one of my favorite places to fish in the fall.
The pilchards will be schooled up on the beaches, shorelines and flats around Miami, Loading up your live wells with bait doesn’t take long. Once loaded I’ll fish patch reefs, finger channels and small wrecks for all kinds of snapper, grouper and jacks with my clients. We’ll typically free line our baits into the feeding frenzy we have created by live chumming our pilchards and the action is non-stop!
