Offshore Kayak Fishing Boca Raton, Florida - First Week of July 2025

[JohnMckroidJr]

The first week of July is a good time to try for Wahoo off a kayak in SE Florida. During my first year of offshore kayak fishing I landed this Ono during the first week of July in 2014.



In 2025, The Wahoo on the beach was landed July 4th, in Boca Raton. The other was taken a couple days later in Pompano Beach. A friend and I decided to head out on the 7th in hopes of finding the zebra striped exotic.



At 4:30 am, I launched at the fire station, and my buddy at Spanish Trails about a mile North in Boca Raton. I spent an hour searching for bait, for just two off the launch area, so I headed South to a historically good location at the inlet. It took 20 minutes to get there, but the bait was right on tap -- Four drops and I was plugged with bait in my XL live well. With a full tank of bait, I started heading out. When I arrived at 100ft, I discovered that disaster struck ? the intake to my live well lost suction and most of my bait died. I had 4 left, and deployed 2 right away. One deep on the downrigger and one on the surface in hopes of a pre-dawn strike.



In 170 feet of water I missed a strike on the surface bait, and put out another. Five minutes later the downrigger reel started screaming. A minute after that, the surface reel started screaming. I was stoked as the witching hour of dawn paid off with a double strike! Since the surface reel was losing line faster, Once I cleared the downrigger weight, I focused on this fish. I was not far from the Hydro Atlantic wreck, so I maneuvered to steer the fish away from the wreck. Reeling up a good fish near a wreck has a high risk of getting taxed by a shark or Barracuda. It seemed as if this fish was aware of the danger, and it took me out to 300ft of water. It was fighting super hard, and did not have the pronounced head shake of a Tuna. The other line went slack, and I debated cutting it as I had to untangle it multiple times from the fish I was fighting. My hopes of Wahoo glory sank at deep color when I could see the fish was of the tuna family. The fish was snagged on the treble hook stinger rig under the gills which explains the long runs and the lack of pronounced head shakes.



Blackfin Tuna makes for excellent sushi! I was stoked to have fresh tuna for searing, grilling, BBQ and sandwich spread.



By the time I was finished landing the first fish, bleeding and photographing, over an hour had passed and I did not expect that there was still a fish on the other rod. I was surprised when the line went taunt as I was retrieving the slack. This fish definitely had the head shakes of another tuna. I was stoked. As it got to deep color I could tell it was not a Blackfin but a Little Tunny or what Floridians call Bonito. It is a lower grade of meat, but I was stoked to have landed both fish from the double strike.





All out of bait, I rendezvous with my buddy who gave me a few of his surplus Goggleyes. He had high hopes of a Wahoo at sunrise also, but instead landed a nice 30+lb King Mackerel. He got 2 Kings first thing in the morning.



I trolled baits the rest of the morning and early afternoon for nothing. I metered a cloud of fish out on a deeper wreck, but they all seemed to have lockjaw. Eventually I jigged up another nice Blackfin.



The afternoon sun was intense and the bite was dead, so I called it a day around 3pm.