Kite fishing has been around for years as an extremely effective way to catch big fish. If you’re not familiar with kite fishing it’s really pretty straight forward.
You aren’t actually fighting the fish with a kite, you are using that kite flying in the air to keep your bait swimming on the surface of the water. The bait is attached to your rod/reel just as it would be if you were letting it swim freely, but there’s a clip in the kite that runs that line up into the air that will release when a fish bites the bait.
You are constantly adjusting the kite while fishing to ensure that bait stays right on the surface where it’s easy for predators to see because the water is bright and it creates a disturbance on the surface. It’s a great way to catch sailfish.
The big question now is why are we using kites when we could be using drones? Drones don’t get caught in the wind and you don’t have to constantly adjust the height of the drone. You can also fly a camera drone that will give you a real-time view of what’s happening in the water so you can see the strike and/or see if a fish is going to take the bait.
In this clip, Josh from BlacktipH uses drone technology to slay the fish while on the boat with Capt. Jimmy from Everglades Fishing Co (I went out on this guy’s boat last August, great guy!). He’s reeling in Bonito who can’t resist the drone and he’s then using those Bonito to go catch Goliath Grouper weight several hundred pounds. Seriously, these Goliaths are big enough to eat a Great Dane.
I’m pretty awful at flying drones. Maybe I’m flying the wrong ones but I can’t seem to keep things steady, but that’s probably because I’ve mostly tinkered around with mini drones and haven’t had much hands-on experience with expensive drones.
But this drone fishing tactic isn’t unique to offshore fishing. Here’s my buddy Capt. Jimmy at Everglades Fishing Co. (the guy running the boat) in this video with a badass tarpon landed from drone fishing on this trip…He’s got some sick fishing gear available on his website by the way, and is 100% the captain you should hit up if you want to go fishing in the Everglades.
If you love fishing and have access to a drone you really need to consider getting on board with the future. You don’t even need a boat for this, with the proper setup you could fly a drone and live bait from the beach, bridge, seawall, or pier and have access to fish you never knew were there.