Florida Fishing offshore Pompano Beach May 2024

[JohnMckroidJr]

In an attempt to pre-fish the Extreme Kayak Fishing Tournament that was canceled for today on account of high winds, I fished Pompano Beach last week. I launched off the beach at 430am for 2 hours of darkness to catch bait prior to sunrise. Bait fishing was super slow, and I hooked a Tarpon forcing me to re-rig, losing limited pre-sunrise fishing time. By 6:30 am, I only had 4 Goggle-eyes. I wanted to take advantage of the first light bite, so I headed out. I had 2 baits out 10 minutes before sunrise in 70ft of water. Often trolling baits over the 3rd reef at this time is a surefire way to hook up. This morning?. Nothing.

I kept slow trolling baits and about 20 minutes later in 180ft of water, The downrigger bait was hit hard. The reel screamed with the classic noise associated with a smoker king mackerel taking a long fast first run. Minutes later, it was on the gaff.



The heart-shot gaff made for a lot of blood all over the place including the the camera lens?..




I trolled for another hour before checking on the baits to discover that one was munched without notice. Most likely a shark or a barracuda did this.



On the deeper wrecks there were stacks of bait with some predators slamming through them. Multiple attempts at speed jigging produced nothing. Several boats were on the marks slow pitch jigging, but nobody was hooking up.






After getting tired of jigging, I started a slow bait troll on the downrigger 140ft down.



On the second pass the bait was hit cleanly. The fish had weight, but swam at me instead of away. The rod bent over solid for a few seconds but then unbuttoned. After shouting a few expletives, I wound the line up to see that the treble hook was bent. Based on the cleanly slice bait, this was potentially a good quality fish.



I trolled for another hour before the downrigger bait was hit again.

This time it was a nice Blackfin Tuna. I had him at color with the leader well wound onto my reel when he decided to take a final run. Had I seen the shark, I would have put the reel in free spool as I have saved many fish by letting them outrun the shark. Foolish me I didn?t, and the fish stopped thumping, the line got heavy and then bit off. The right move would have been to free spool and peddle at least 500ft away from the wreck before attempting to retrieve the fish again ? oh well. I should have known better than to attempt to bring tuna up within 200ft of a wreck.






All out of bait, I tried sabiking bait off a variety of wrecks. Eventually, I got a few Bar Jacks. I put the biggest one (16?) out first and it was eaten within minutes.



The strike felt like a shark and bit the line off within the first five minutes. I trolled the second Bar Jack for about an hour before it produced a Barracuda.



I trolled the third Bar Jack for an hour before deciding to call it a day and head for the barn?..