by Robin
This will be short & sweet since it was a long, fun day. Lots of playing hard and our family is tired (most sleeping already).
Beautiful sunrise. Cleared the port at 7:30am, after being held up for a sub to enter the port.
Cruised 27 knots out to 115-ish feet when we saw our first rip/ temperature break.
Very fishy. I spotted a small phin (dolphin - AKA mahi mahi). Two lines in. Made a couple North/South passes and then went East. Double hook-up in less than a .5 mi.
Yeah..... Oh except that Jack got the boat very bloody with trying to knock out our eldest's fish. With 2 fish doing aerobatics in the boat floor, flying double-hooks , I was barefoot, son with sandals, Jack made the decision to knock them out. ONLY.... the big girl didn't like that idea. Sigh.
Another rip/temp break about 125 ft, other boats on the same rip. Kept going east. Got dead looking so we went back to the first area. Probably should have headed out deeper. We stopped about 140 ft because the storm clouds seem to be building fast on the coast. Another boat landed 7 in 178 feet, between trolling & a floating log. That's probably where Jack will focus later in the week, looking for those big 30 lb mahi.
It was a good opportunity with the flat seas to capture a couple elusive flying fish photos. They're not elusive, as in rare. They're so quick it is nearly impossible to have your camera ready. Fortunately for me, the water clarity was pretty good today and I could see some swimming along before they went flying.
Saw numerous turtles, puffer fish on the surface (24 mi offshore!), crevalle jacks in schools, multiple bonito bait crashing parties, a large pod of dolphins (mammals), too many to county small mahi that would not eat big ballyhoo rigs, schools of barracuda, sardines, unknowns (blue fish?), and a large Greater Hammerhead that we could follow to capture a decent picture to save my life. The ocean was very much alive in the morning. By 11am, it was so hot & flat, the bite & activity of critters slowed down.
As mentioned earlier, we headed back in at 12:30 to save time & fuel. Nice to call it a day early. Took our time cleaning fish & boat. A big boomer showed up at 5:30 instead of earlier like we had thought. It's better to be safe than sorry. Jack needed the rest anyhow.
Tomorrow, no charters. Thurs, Jack had another customer but we may either crash his charter or bump him for later. I think we can fill the box much better in a couple days.
Learning curve: get out EARLIER. Go farther. Have more spinners ready for smaller fish.
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