Whereabouts Unknown

We went to the Bahamas over Christmas to do some diving and fishing. It was fun and I plan to write about some of those adventures later. On the way back from the Bahamas we stopped over in Miami and made a trip to Captain Harry’s Fishing Supply (the tackle shop nearest to our motel). I was inspired to do some shopping by a 2017 article I found in the travel section of sportfishingmag.com called Fishing Caribbean Islands Casting Poppers and Stickbaits, written by a fellow named Julien Lajournade.

I have done some popper fishing off of the rocks here in our temporary Caribbean home, but without much luck. As I mentioned in my last post, the reefs and drop-offs here are deep and steep, so I have been curious to try some subsurface lures. One thing that has produced a lot of fish on light tackle has been a 3/8 ounce Kastmaster, but Lajournade’s article left me thinking about trying some larger stickbaits. I tried to get a little bit of everything at Captain Harry’s, which included these slow-sinking twitchbaits from Yo-Zuri:

If you look closely at the above photograph, you’ll see some scratches on the top lure, just behind the “gill plate” and above the first treble hook. This is the evidence of the actual topic of this post, my first fish of the new year. On New Year’s Eve, we headed to a quiet stretch of black sand beach. We fished while the sun set and Tara hooked over half a dozen fish on a Kastmaster, several of which went straight onto the fire for our final dinner of 2023. Meanwhile, I fished the “Red Head” twitchbait without so much as a follow.

But early the next morning, during the first sunrise of 2024, I was back on the beach to try again. I worked the lure with both fast and slow retrieves and tried to pause frequently as Lajournade had suggested. It was at the end of one of these pauses, just as I started to crank my reel, that I felt a solid strike. The fish did not take much line but kept up a strong pull just outside the drop-off. Eventually I worked it in and used the shore break to help get it on the sand. It was a very nice horse-eye jack. It wasn’t terribly long, but it was incredibly thick. I only had my old waterproof camera with me, which had been on the fritz for several months, so this was the best picture I got: