Live-Bait Lessons from the Experts for Successful Offshore Fishing

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Meticulous notes I took for this article are at the bottom of the sea somewhere south of Fowey Light. For all I know, given the circumstances under which I dropped my cellphone, they could be inside the belly of a sailfish.

So you can take some of the following details with a grain of salt.

What I remember is we had one angler at the bow fighting a sailfish—I believe it was Matt George, from Stuart. There were two, possibly even three, boats off our port side also fighting sailfish. I was holding a spinning rod with a live cigar minnow in the water, waiting for a bite of my own. In my right hand was my new iPhone 16, snapping photos of Matt, waiting for the moment when Capt. George Gozdz—reaching for the leader—would holler “Caught fish!” to Capt. Ray Rosher, at the wheel.

Suddenly the mosh pit shifted my direction and my phone flashed like a wounded goggle-eye into the clear blue Gulf Stream. We got the fish, one of 14 for the three-day tournament. I lost my phone but kept my hand on the rod. When it’s the final day and you’re within a few catches of the top seat, you go hard and don’t look back.

Matt and I were guests aboard the brand-new Caymas 44CT, fishing the Reef Cup Invitational sailfish tournament. It’s held every year out of Ocean Reef Club in North Key Largo.

Gozdz—whom I’ve known for years—is a Caymas team captain and host of Unfathomed TV. He fishes often with Earl Bentz, president of Caymas, also on the boat. Rosher, our guest captain, with his first mate Ben Cosio, runs the Miss Britt charterboats in Miami, owns R&R Tackle and like many local highliners, works freelance captain jobs for tournaments.

Alternating positions around the huge deck of the 44-foot catamaran were Ocean Reef Club homeowners Bob Falk and his son and daughter, Todd and Vanessa. Just as I found myself pulled between rod and camera, Bob swung between fishing and monitoring the scoresheet. Bob is a numbers man. Vanessa was all readiness; she’s a hunter. “Pay attention to your bait, your fish,” she advises. “That’s the key.” Todd was cool, collected and looking for opportunity—at one point, on our second day, Vanessa and I were up front willing a sailfish to eat a bait near our mylar dredge teaser. I’d seen the fish cruise in from the north, a purple-black shard piercing the blue, but lost it. Todd didn’t miss a beat—he picked up a rod, guesstimated the trajectory of the fish and pitched a sardine. Todd’s in sales and marketing, which makes sense. Another fish radioed in.

Exclusivity is sort of baked into the Ocean Reef model, but look around for elitism and you probably won’t find it. Certainly not at the Falks’ home. Bob and Susan were gracious hosts—Susan greeting us with refreshments at the end of the day.

Neighbors hooting as the boat pulls into the canal. Titans of finance and industry mixing it up in deck boots. Beach parties. The late Jimmy Buffett’s old Rybovich, Last Mango, idling alongside a 90-foot enclosed-bridge Viking. You can call the Invitational a serious tournament, but it’s carried on in a gentlemanly fashion.You radio in your hookups and releases, you sign your paper.

Around here, Ray Rosher is basically a legend—though he’s given to crediting his own heroes, like Palm Beach livebaiting pioneer Nick Smith. Me? I’ve been chronicling South Florida billfish tournaments for the last 30 years and I’m always paying attention to things Rosher does and says. On my own boat, I don’t tournament fish, but I always take home bits of Rosher wisdom and rigging that I apply later.

1. Keep Baits in the Water

One thing I really admired—and was displayed remarkably well on the wide-open configuration of Bentz’ big Caymas cat—was Rosher’s instinct for keeping baits in the water. Never stop fishing. “After a hookup, we roll the boat forward, fight the fish with the angler in the bow, and that lets us keep fishing,” he said. “Sailfish travel in packs and that fish will often have others with it. Very hard to win a tournament with singles.”

Moving crew around the Caymas 44CT was a cinch—there’s ample space to walk around the console, and the boat is incredibly stable in choppy seas. An accessory choice which simplifies this operation is the cordless electric reel to handle kites or teasers. You want the electric retrieve to save time, but you don’t want to have to move fishing rods around the setups—or plug and unplug. You definitely don’t want kite lines getting tangled and twisted when the captain has to make quick turns to follow a hooked fish—or multiple hookups!

At the Reef Cup, we had two PENN Fathom 80 Electric reels with braided line and Carnage III bent-butt kite rods. The Fathom electrics have rechargeable battery packs. It’s easy to pick up these rigs, as well as the fishing rods with baits still hanging below the kites, and move them around the boat as needed. This allows the crew to keep the baits fishing as the captain adjusts the boat to follow a fish.

Of course, one of the marks of a good captain-mate-angler combination is the ability for all three to judge and communicate the actual—versus perceived—urgency of chasing a hooked fish. Strategically, it may be best to allow a fish to simply take line while the crew remains poised for a second or third bite; the guys prepare for this by packing lots of line on fishing reels. The 40-series PENN Fathom II leverdrag conventional reels carry more than 600 yards of 20-pound-test monofilament; 7500-class PENN spinners (used for flatlines and rigger baits) are backed with 30-pound braid and topped with 300 yards of 20-pound mono.

Right out of the starting blocks, on the first day, I saw the logic in watching for multiple bites: Vanessa hooked a fish on the short right kite bait; it charged offshore, jumping wildly. Soon a second fish grabbed the long right kite bait; Bob was now tight. Rosher and Ben negotiated the two anglers toward the bow, where he could watch their progress, but we still had active baits in the water. In the mayhem, Matt hooked a third fish.

We got the release on all three fish. It looked a bit like chaos to me—but it was controlled chaos. Rosher’s advice to Ben, the mate: “Speak loud and clearly, use simple words, use hand gestures,” was something I think ought to be printed on tee shirts.

2. Spread Your Baits Far and Wide

It’s the timeless question, should we fish baits here, or over there? For an enterprising captain like Rosher, the answer is “Yes.” You do both. You fish baits here, and you fish baits there.

Fishing kites are steered by weighting one side with pinch-on splitshot sinkers. With two up, one leaning left, one right, you can have hundreds of feet between baits dangling below the release clips, covering potential lanes of travel for sailfish and other open-water roamers.

All this is good and well, but the point system at the Reef Cup (sadface emoji) actually devalues kite fishing. The tournament scores kite-caught sailfish 100 points; fish caught out of outriggers, 200 points. This calculus is a matter of some debate. Kite fishing does confer a bit of an advantage for anglers skilled in the dark arts—If a free-jumping fish is spotted nearby, you can reel kite baits up out of the water and quickly maneuver to the scene, dropping them right on the spot. In certain wind-and-current situations, the kite fishing boat will cover a much wider spread than a boat using outriggers. Also there’s no angler dropback with a fishing kite; with the circle hooks universally used, anglers simply reel up after the line pops out of the release clip. An outrigger or flatline bite may require a bit more interaction, allowing a few seconds countdown before coming tight.

For the Reef Cup, Rosher had a solution he felt could meld the best of both worlds—the spread and hookup simplicity of the kite, with the points of outrigger fishing. If the conditions weren’t ideal for kite fishing, he reasoned, we’d spread flatline baits using floats. Drift fish with a big, wide spread—a “wall of baits,” as he described it.

“One thing Nick Smith always said he liked drift fishing better than slow-trolling,” Rosher explained. “The live baits are pulled in a natural manner, not stop and go. It’s a cleaner bite, too, less chance of a leader getting wrapped around the bill.”

For the second day of the tournament, we stowed the kites and pulled out the spinning rods. Ray and Ben used balloons which they hitched to the lines about 40 feet from the bait using elastic rigging bands.

“This gives us the spread of fishing kites… without the kites,” Rosher said.

Balloons as a general solution to fishing strategy have fallen out of favor inasmuch as unattended or “breakaway” balloons add to ocean waste. Easy enough to pick them up—which we did, though many stayed on the line, plucked off and disposed in the boat. I watched the balloons and immediately thought of the foam popping corks and oval floats which we use for everything from seatrout to tarpon to bluewater fish. Figured I might try replicating the deployment in other settings.

With a north wind against the current, Rosher had us drop the first long bait—effectively the “left long”—then motor offshore, drop left short, then right short, then right long. Then back away from the right long until the boat is in the middle. A fifth bait was deployed as a flatline. The Caymas cat, I noticed, drifted perfectly beam-to. Rosher made some adjustments with the engines, but for the most part the boat sat rock solid, with 44 feet of gunnel and bow-to-stern rodholders available to fish. We even put a pair of mylar strip teasers off the side of the boat as we drifted.

The trick to deploying the baits was using a weighted float—the balloon filled with some water—on the first bait, so it’s not easily blown or pulled off course while setting the others. The last bait was unweighted—a little northwest wind helped keep it offshore as we backed away from it.

How’d this work out? Here’s one telling example:

On the third day of fishing, right at the 8:30 start, we spotted sailfish showering ballyhoo in about 70 feet of water off Triumph Reef. That was quite a bit shallower than most of the action in the event. I recall (there again my lost notes!) that most of the bites were in the 130- to 180-foot range, over the event.

Rosher set the left long herring in 80 feet—water shallow enough to see bottom—then motored out over the dropoff to deploy the other baits.

“These fish will run in shallow to chase bait, then fall back out here off the edge, in the deep,” he commented.

By the time we finished setting the bait spread, our right long was in over 100 feet of water, more traditional “sailfish depths” at least 250 yards away.

Sure enough the left long went off—Todd had a fish. Minutes later, we got one on the long right, in deep water.

I looked at the operation and commented to Bentz—years ago he helped developed the modern bass boat, among many other ventures—“Earl, this is basically shiner fishing for sailfish! It’s like livebait bass fishing.”

That brought a smile.

Take Care of Your Baits

Captain Rosher is meticulous about catching, storing and handling baits. You’d think “caught today-fresh” baits are preferred for tournaments, but the guys actually favor baits that’ve been penned up, “seasoned” for a time in clean tidal water.

After a few days in captivity, Rosher feeds them a mixture of packaged krill and shrimp, later followed by pellets (there’s a great YouTube recording of a seminar he did at West Marine a few years back explaining the process). After a few weeks, goggle-eyes, pilchards and cigar minnows produce what Rosher describes as a second slime coat, which makes them hardier and livelier, especially desirable when kite-fishing.

On the boat, great care is taken to avoid dropping baits on the deck or handling them with hands—until one is being rigged up with a bridle to the circle hook. Any baits caught to supplement the day’s fishing are carefully unhooked with a de-hooking tool. Abrasions that disturb the slime weaken the baits.

The advantage this confers to the anglers is apparent when you watch how the action unfolds in a tournament like the Reef Cup. With an array of baits in the water (the Reef Cup permitted no more than five baits), and the goal of multiple hookups, it’s common for anglers to reel up and reposition baits. If a fish is spotted at an unfavorable distance from the baits, the kite baits can be reeled up briefly as the boat is moved into a better position. Sometimes baits will all be brought to the boat (as when outrigger fishing), berthed in a livewell or a sequestered in flow-through tubes, hooks still affixed.

Baits may be cast directly to fish, in some cases. The healthiest, strongest baits will endure such handling, greatly increasing their appeal when it counts.

4. Never Give Up

Expect to hook a fish at the last second.

As we approached 4 p.m. on the final day, Rosher asked if I’d film the clock with a cellphone. For a second, I thought he was ribbing me over my earlier loss.

“Ray. I don’t have a phone.”

“No, here, use mine,” he said.

“Ray, you know I might drop this thing in the water.”

Handing me his phone, Rosher had the VHF mic in his other hand, ready to call in a hookup, if Lady Luck smiled on us. The object is to document the time, mitigating any potential delays or questions over a “buzzer beater” report to the tournament committee boat.

As I watched the clock turn from 3:58 to 3:59, I was keenly aware that a double hookup, followed by successful releases, would win the event! We knew the numbers; Bob had been following all along. On our first two days, we’d called in releases within 5 minutes of close. We knew it could happen.

Four sets of Falk eyes—including Fletcher, Todd’s oldest son, who joined us for the day—watched the baits. Matt, George, Ben, me—all focused and silent.

“Time,” Rosher said.

Fourth place out of a field of 56 boats. We had 2400 points, same as third-place finisher Sweet Water; ties are broken by time of final release. In second place was Buckalot with 2600, and team Priceless won it with 2700 points.

I felt we did great, fishing a new boat, its first appearance on the tournament circuit, a crew from multiple zip codes. I may have lost some notes and photos, but I took home some great lessons I’ll use on the summer sailfish grounds off Stuart, the tarpon migration, heck even my next bass fishing trip.

If a sailfish or tuna happens to spit an iPhone in a blue Otterbox into your boat, reach out to me!

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• This article was featured in the May 2025 issue of Florida Sportsman magazine. Click to subscribe

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