Florida's Record-Breaking Sailfish Bite

Florida's Record-Breaking Sailfish Bite

A series of hydrometeorological and biological events must have occurred off the coast of Cape Canaveral, Florida,   during the 39th annual  Pelican  Yacht  Club  Invitational Billfish Tournament in January, when a total of 969 sailfish were released in just four days — 712 of them on Day Two  — breaking records by the handful.  Capt.
David Grubbs’s 73-fish tournament broke Capt.  Scott  Fawcett’s  2012 record of 57.
Grubbs and the commercial kingfish fleet were credited for locating the biomass.
This is the story of that incredible event Capt. David Grubbs, Grand Slam First Place — 73 releases. We had been to Fort Pierce a few days prior to the tournament to pre-fish, but it was slow. My boss had some guests in, so we took the boat back up to New Smyrna to try and catch his friends a few,
but saw nothing.
The day of the captains’ meeting, we ran the boat back to Fort Pierce, looking around the Cape where some other boats had been seeing them.  I saw a few free jumpers, so I marked the area, figuring it would be a good place to start.
There were no tournament boundaries, so everyone was scattered, and it was rough. I ran north, tight to the beach, then another 20 miles offshore to get a tolerable angle on my waypoint from the day before.
On my second down-sea tack, we raised and caught one, so I stayed put.
I was so far from the fleet that I couldn’t hear anything on the radio, but at 11:30  a.m. I got a call from  Cowpoke’s  Mike Brady. I knew if I broadcasted my position I’d be converged on, so I told him:  “We are where you and I fished together the last time.” Over the next few hours, five or six other boats showed up.
The next day I went back to the same spot. We stayed on the southern end of that 5-mile area and caught 33. That was the same day JT got their daily record-breaking 41.  It was so rough that even
though we were raising them, keeping them tight was tough.
Day Three was like a light switch had been turned off. We got two releases but had to lay the last day.
This was the best sailfishing I had ever seen in this area, and we ended up winning with 73 releases, beating my personal best of 41 for  60 on my old charter boat in the early 2000s. Capt. Mike Brady, Cowpoke
Second Place — 66 releases There had been a lot of coverage from Fort Pierce to Miami in the weeks before the tournament. Grubbs got a report from the king mackerel fishermen, saying they were hooking sails on their drone spoons. He didn’t tell anyone, but I knew on our way out the first day that he wasn’t going up there for anything.
I  followed Grand Slam, setting up 12 miles south of them.  We picked up and ran when he started catching, setting up about a mile below him. A little afternoon, we got a  sail bite on the prospect.
When I turned down sea, I looked at my right dredge and saw eight or  10 fish in it;  I glanced at my left dredge and saw the exact same thing. We raised an additional  35  fish,  releasing 24 for 45 with only four anglers,  leaving much hungry fish behind the boat.
Everyone went north on the second day because the bite was some 45 miles east of Pelican Flats off Canaveral in the deep water. It was rougher than the day before, but I got above everyone else and was marking lots of fish. We stayed out
of the fleet, on a stretch of water all to ourselves, going 40 for 65 bites.
We laid on Day Three, and by Day Four, we only needed nine fish to win.
Grand Slam was fished out, but unfortunately, everything slowed down. We ended up with 66 releases for the tournament.
Capt. Josh Chaney, Champagne Lady Third Place — 58 releases After the Gold Cup’s slow fishing, I was n’t expecting anything to change. We could barely hear Grubbs on the VHF,  so I called Brady and he said he thought he had Grand  Slam on the radar.  After we heard them catch a quad, we immediately charged directly into the 7-foot  head sea for an hour and a half. They were there. By the time I got turned around on a flopper, we hooked a quad. Out of 30 bites that afternoon, we caught 18 — every encounter being a multiple. You would hook four,   look behind you and there would be another 25 fish in the turn, with four or five on each dredge. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.
The entire fleet lined up on Day Two waiting for the cannon to go off, arriving at least an hour after lines in.
No one cared because we all knew the fish would be there;  we caught 36 that day.  It was the best fishing I’d seen since
Bone Shaker won the Stuart Light Tackle tournament in 1997. Twenty-seven boats fishing the same stretch of
water, fish jumping everywhere, every boat hooked up.
On  Day Three we ended up another 10 miles north, going four for 16. Anyone could have caught up to us, but we held at 58. Brady and Grubbs are my heroes. I’m lucky to be able to fish beside them.  By Capt. David Grubbs, Mike Brady, and Josh Chaney, as told to Capt.  Jen Copeland.