After bridge fishing I arrived home in time to take a nap and then get ready to set up my Vertical Jigging gear. I knew I was to get punished by the Greater Amberjacks, those that carry the nick name of “Sea Donkeys” so I set up some heavy line on my reels. Four rods for this 3/4 day jigging trip with one of them a light setup in case we encountered a school of Mahi Mahi. As many trips before all reels were checked for loose screws and drags were set at 15 and 9 pounds respectively (this time I set the drag at the boat). I did not minimize my selection of jigs because I was expecting some cut offs by toothy fish. I took twelve 250 grams, twelve 150 grams, and the rest were 100 grams and under.  First up was a 250 gram jigging rod with a Stella 8000PG and color coded PE6 line (80 lb Test), a 200 gram jigging rod with a Saragossa 10000 and 70 lb test white braid , a 400 gram rod and conventional PE6 jigging reel with 300 yards of PE6 (80lb test) braid,  and last but not least a live bait rod to double as a light jigging rod rod with 30lb test green braid that could double as a small jig pitching rod for Mahi Mahi. Enough of the talk about gear here is the report and it’s mostly in pictures:

It was  4 of us on this Florida Keys Charter out of the Postcard Inn Marina in Islamorada. I arrived there early and just waited so I snapped this picture.

Captain Bruce of the Capt. Easy Sport fishing Charter arrived shortly afterwards and we spoke about previous trips and the Mahi Mahi bite which had been on an off at times.

After Adam, Ed, and Jimmy arrived they loaded the boat and off we were to our adventure.

Shortly after we were in 300 feet of water and started jigging. I had some mishaps with the Diawa Boat Braid line as it got cut off, by the wreck, and then on the second fish the jig was cut off by a possible barracuda, and on the third I got sharked. As we had a quad hook up and I lost my fish Ed, Adam, and jimmy did well on bringing theirs in.

The second drift over the wreck came and this time I connected in the quad hook up and we all brought our fish in. But unfortunately for me it was a Barracuda and so I decided to change colors from a blue to orange and seemed to work for me, everyone was using pink at the time and  perhaps it was just a coincidence that I got cut off and then caught a cuda since others changed to a blue color later on and were successful.

     

On the third drift I was able to connect well and this time I was using a conventional jigging reel which felt a lot more powerful than my other setups.

The fourth drift came along and again we all connected well and brought all our fish in to be released soon after.

  

 

The fifth drift came in and again it was a repeat but I was beat by this time on my 4th Greater Amberjack, I just had to rest my arms on the rail while Adam and Jimmy continued hand in hand with their 7th and 8th Greater Amberjacks. Ed  after his third fish took a little break on this drift and took some of the pictures.

On this one I believe we stayed on the drift as the Captain kept power drifting just over the wreck and Ed got back on for his 4th Greater Amberjack. By this time we were no longer taking pictures of the fish and were just catching and releasing them as soon as we could. I caught my fith Greater Amberjack and I was basically done for the rest of the trip. I literally begged for Mercy on my 5th fish. I di try again on other wrecks but was really wishing for a fish not to hit, LOL.

Here is Captain Bruce quickly releasing the Greater Amberjacks caught Vertical Jigging.

 And one last Picture of one of Jimmy’s Greater Amberjacks.

 

Afterwards other boats started showing up trying to figure out what we were doing and off their live baits went in the water. Our bite started to slow down so the Captain Bruce moved the boat to another wreck. I got a small almaco jack and Jimmy did the same at a later time. On the other wrecks we were not able to get the fish to bite and so we headed home.

The day was great and all we wanted to accomplish was done on the first hour of fishing. We could not have asked for more. Off we went to eat lunch at a nice little restaurant by the shore and off to home we went to face the Sunday traffic.

 Short recap:

Of all the jigs I took I lost 3 Nagamasas and used only 6 different jigs after that with one orange jig working the best. The heaviest set up was the one used the most as the Amberjacks were in the bigger side of the scale. I most say that Captain Bruce is really knowledgeable about power drifting and keeping the boat in check for all the lines to stay vertically. We were able to work our jigs the way they were intended to be used “Vertically”. Kudos to the Captain for a class service, we will absolutely be back and I strongly recommend his Charter Services for any kind of fishing, but specially for Vertical jigging.

THE FISHING TRIP: Greater Amberjack Vertical Jigging
Aboard the “Capt. Easy” with Captain Bruce Andersen
The Spot : islamorada, Florida Keys
Weather Forecast: Sunny 0% chance of rain, Saturday didn’t even check the winds as all week had been less than 2 foot seas and so this days was the same.
Water: Light chop almost no current.
Fish catches: Greater 26 Amberjacks and 2 Almaco Jacks. Adam with 9, Jimmy with 8, Me with 5, and Ed with 4.
Biggest size Type : Fish were mostly 30 pounds to 50 pounds with a couple about 25 pounds.
Techniques : Vertical Jigging
Jigs : 150 to 300 gram, all jigs would have worked in this situation as the Greater Amber Jacks were in Spawn season.

 

Youtube Video Part 1

Youtube video part 2

Youtube video part 3

Youtube video part 4

Youtube video part 5

Youtube video part 6 and final part of this fishing report.