A few friends and I were sitting in BAR prep class Thursday morning when we decided to check the forecast, saw it was going to be 1 ft at 9 sec. Immediately pulled up a Hilton’s chart and saw a huge break right over the Sow Pen and Deli. Made the call to leave the lecture early pack up and ride down. Left the dock at 4:10 lines in around 7, 5 miles short of the Sow Pen. Most of the weeds were broken up all day and couldn’t really find a good temp break besides the shallow one in about 150 ft. which we only boated SkipJack off of. Kept pushing out and did not get the first dolphin until 11 in about 450 ft. where we found a nice line. Boated some more off of it and had to make some runs so we didn’t get soaked by the rain that was out there. After that back to fishing put some more in the boat around 450 and started to ride back in shallow. Found some patches in about 400 ft. with about 75 schools under it. Picked at some of those for a while. Ended the day with 12 dolphin mixed bag, biggest was a bull about 25-30 lbs, a 6 ft. white tip shark who ate a tiny piece of ballyhoo under the weed line and some bottom groceries we stopped at on the way back in. Seas were great, but I am worried the dolphin have pushed north.
'90 Maverick Master Angler 18.5/'03 150 Evinrude
'05 Angler 27 CC
Thanks for the tip on Hilton’s. Do you really find their service worth while? I’ve been using Roffs. But they have limitations. I went to the Hilton’s web site and looked for a few minutes. I seems you have to have an Ipad w/gps to take full advantage ot it.
Sounds like you’re doing the right stuff jumping on weather immediately etc.
Nice trip.
Hey…I just noticed we have the same number of posts on the forum
19ft. Carolina Skiff
w/115hp Yamaha 4stroke
27ft. Contender
w/twin 225hp Yamaha 4stroke
Hilton’s is the only one I’ve ever used I use my iPhone when we are out there and it works fine for some reason, unfortunately I fell off the dock loading the boat the night before so I wasnt able to utilize it the chart. I figured with that big of a break it wouldn’t be hard to find but in 20 hours it seemed that rhe huge break had pushed out to about 1000 ft. I do like the service though and it’s nice you can go back and look at years of data on the site to see patterns etc.
'90 Maverick Master Angler 18.5/'03 150 Evinrude
'05 Angler 27 CC
Interesting. I watched several of the tutorials on Utube. I already have an Iphone so I might try it.
Hilton says he will offer a free trial. His data offers layers/surface pressure etc that others don’t.
19ft. Carolina Skiff
w/115hp Yamaha 4stroke
27ft. Contender
w/twin 225hp Yamaha 4stroke
I just wish I knew how to mine all of the relevant data a little better, I don’t feel as if I am utilizing it to its full potential yet.
'90 Maverick Master Angler 18.5/'03 150 Evinrude
'05 Angler 27 CC