by Robin
I'm going to do something I rarely do - give a timeline. Personally, I was curious about it and the camera keeps track of it. Neither Jack nor I wore watches (must get a battery in mine) but I knew the action was constant and we put a full day in at the Atlantic office.
7:36 Leave Docks. Coincidentally meet up with our friends from Orlando (Jack's coworker). Make introductions & make a plan. 
7:50 Cruising - part with John & Billie a mile or so outside the inlet.
8:25 Still cruising - somebody's zonked!9:45 -bottom fishing not working well. Short snapper, black sea bass & 1 lizard fish. Barracuda & remora show up so we left. We got only 1 keeper b.s.b. John does about the same on his first call over the radio to us.
We're starting to see nice broken sargassum weeds in the area & flying fish, so the first line goes in. Before Jack can get the 2nd line in, Sail is on (full story later).
10:05 hook-up w/ Sail.
10:05 hook-up w/ Sail.10:08 Sail makes run under boat couple times.
10:10 Snap Sail pic (in all the excitement, we forgot to lift him up better and spread the beautiful sail)
(Click thumbnail to see colors!)Released back to the water.
I'll have to write more about this another day and express my emotions better. That's me on the business end!!
10:10 Release long before my heart was ready to say good-bye. Jack bumps the boat in gear and I get his head down in the water and then revive him until he has enough energy to go. We're all tired but on Cloud 9.11:00 - trolling towards John & Billie somewhere near High Bar now. Double-hook-up with Mahi & Cuda. (no picture - sorry) I was fortunate to get the mahi and Jack got the barracuda. I had the hardest time subduing that feisty mahi. Cut up my fingers with the wire leader.
11:20 - I discovered a raft on our way over to our friends. There were about 30 peanut to small legal sized mahi mahi under it, along with some triggers. We started catching peanuts & told John to sneak over to us. You never "advertise" too much over the radio.
11:30 - First legal (23")mahi under raft, caught by my youngest (not pictured because we got a video).
11:45 - Jack's first mahi from under raft. He's flipping out here. All 26" of him.
12:05 - Decide all the other mahi are spooked. Billie takes a quick pic of me with my 5 lb bull mahi caught earlier on the troll. 
12:15 - zooming 10 miles further offshore together. We enjoy a fun series of pictures here. We took pics of each other's boats in action. This was not my best shot of their boat but it was downsized so I went with it.
1:00 - fishing in deep water, natural bottom, in the quiet Gulf Stream. catch our 1st fish - Choc Chip porgy. Very good white meat & makes a nice panfish, although we fried ours up today.1:05 - John tells us to get over by them & get some of what they've got (20 lb snapper, scamp, porgy). So we practically fish on top of them (sorry 'bout that guys) and ......
1:15 - Two suicide dolphin show up. Those are fish that come to you, out of curiousity, and you grab your light spinners and catch them. We boated one cow, John gets the other cow.1:36 - Jack gets bowed over with the pole. Billie caught the first pic of him fighting the fish. Turned out to be a 30+ lb Warsaw grouper.
2:11 - Eldest hooks up with something big on bottom. Rocks up. Jack also hooks up with something big on bottom. Lose both fish.
The bite has shut down on that particular deep-water bottom so we head back in, leaving John & Billie behind. See some nice "water highways" several miles in and decide to troll a little. See another sail in the distance jumping about a dozen times just for fun. AMAZING!!
3:15 Line goes off & it doesn't jump. It's a bonito. Get a call from John saying that Billie has pulled in a big amberjack. Way to Go Billie!! 
Pull in lines and head to next closer-to-home spot. I did some bottom fishing off a shallower reef only to get grunts and small beeliner. Twice I had something big & heavy but not a fighter over a particular hump on the ocean floor. My guess was nurse shark. I've caught them before and they like to hang on for the ride up but never give a fight. Mine self-released mid-way up.
4:50 - Long ride back in.
5:08 - Hit Port mouth. See Carnival's Sensation & Disney's ?? going out.5:20 - Car drive home. Call my parents and share the good news. Jack's cell phone starts ringing like crazy with all the guys from work wanting to know about his day. Some went out today, some going out tomorrow.
8:30 Fed, Cleaned up & get ready to go in the hot tub.
8:31 Lightening strikes close to the house.
8:31:30 Out of the hot tub.
No comments:
Post a Comment