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This is a picture of a shrimp trawler and a 17' center console out along the 27 fathom ridge. This spot is about 32 miles offshore from Port Canaveral. I think taking a 17 foot, open boat 32 miles offshore is just another form of "natural selection". There have been too many occasions where large bands of severe thunderstorms have swept through too allow me confidence in that small of an open boat so far offshore. See the next photos....
This is Bob with a Bonita (Little Tunny) he just brought in. It might make good bait for a real fish. :)
Bob fighting a Kingfish out on 8A....
Here's a 42lb I dolphin I caught while vacationing down on Marathon. The black blob next to the fish is my 42lb dog, Bodee.
A bonefish I caught near the 7-Mile bridge (on a Pink Mirrolure 52 no less!).
This is the first Billfish I ever caught. I was alone at the time so the pictures aren't great, but it's tough to fight a fish and take pictures at the same time. I also had a another Sailfish hooked up on a different line at the same time. I got the other fish to the boat also. He had hooked himself straight thru the center of the bill so he wasn't getting off by himself.
Bob with a nice dolphin caught while we were down in the Keys.
And here I am fighting a ~20lb dolphin. This pitiful rod didn't have much backbone so it looks like I'm fighting Moby Dick.
Here I am fighting something. I'm hoping it's a Wahoo based on the way it's fighting. It turns out to be a 42 lb Wahoo. We need to teach the camera operator to frame the picture on the fish, not me. :) And maybe turning the camera 90 degrees would be even better. The wahoo was almost 5 feet long. Pretty messy looking. That's what happens when you gaff a fish through the gills. But we got it in and that's what counts. It was quite tasty!
I caught this Jack while slow trolling along the beach near Patrick AFB. I caught 2 others in almost exactly the same spot. This one weighed 22 lbs. One of the Jacks I caught along the beach bottomed out my boga grip (30+ lbs). These big jacks put up quite a fight on light tackle. Round and round the boat we go....
To put the size of this Jack in perspective, that's a 6" long skirt in his mouth....
"Wombat" with a Sailfish that we released....
Here's a photo taken from the crow's nest of the crew hard at work....
Just when I was positive my boat had been sprayed with Repello-Fish 9000, Mr Wahoo made a visit. He was small, but tasty.
Here's a picture taken while on our way into Treasure Cay on Abacos in August '98. We ran straight from Port Canaveral to Walker's Cay (about 140 miles) to check in and refuel, and then continued down to Treasure Cay. Unfortunately that big old storm cell was sitting directly on top of Treasure Cay. It's hard to spot but there is also a water spout coming down out of the cloud. But it's a nice picture, and everyone survived.
This photo was taken while we were anchored on the leeward side of Whale Cay, Abacos.
A sailfish we caught while in the Bahamas...
Here I am working on a Yellowfin tuna. If you look very closely in the background, you can see the "Dream Catcher", a Mirage 32. Unfortunately we (as in "I") performed an LDR (long distance release) on this fish.
We caught these dolphin while fishing on my veterinarian's new 31 Contender. It was the first time he had made the run to the "other-side" of the Gulf Stream in the new boat. We chased schools of foaming Yellowfin around for several hours, but couldn't get them interested in biting. It's a real nice boat. We got both dolphin under floating debris. They were both around 30 lbs. The fish that is.
This is a small kingfish Bob just caught. We released this fish as we do almost all kingfish we catch. We were slow trolling live bait on 8A and caught quite a few kings that day. There were 45 boats on 8A at the time. It was like the parking lot at the mall during the Christmas holiday season.
Here's another nice kingfish that Bob caught. I'm holding it because Bob was 'viscously' attacked by the fish in the photo above and was fishing one handed at this point. Don't ask what happened to the boga-grip. :(
Here's a photo of a small Wahoo I got recently. I was doing some high speed trolling out on the 'cones' attempting to get some of the "marks" back in my GPS (they were erased when the unit failed, D'oooh!) when I came across one of the most beautiful rips I've ever seen. I got 2 nice Wahoo out of the rip. The one in the photo landed on the deck when I had to use the one-handed gaff/one handed rod method because it looked like the hook was about to pull.
Here's a couple pictures of the Wahoo (49.2 lb) we caught which won 1st Place Wahoo and Top CFOA boat in the '99 CFOA Memorial Day tournament. We found out how long a fish will fit in the fish box. It's a good thing I keep a large insulated "fishbag" on the boat for when we boat a really monstrous 'Hoo I'm planning on catching....
Capt Brown fighting a fish out on Pelican Flats....
This is why we call it the food chain....
Here's the sunrise while we were getting the boat ready for our Labor Day weekend trip. Another Kingfish which was released. We also got 2/3 of the Trash Can Slam (Bonita, Barracuda), as well as a couple dolphin (5#, 20#).
We finally got to fish the new Mirage 32 and it happened to be the day of the Coconuts Dolphin and Wahoo Blast tournament. The boat performed very well and we caught a 15 lb dolphin (on a Little Bird/BullyHoo rig) and a 41 lb Wahoo on one of my new wire line rigs. It was nice being able to fly the Dolphin and Wahoo flags on the first fishing trip. :)
The fishing action during the 2nd trip on the new Mirage was real slow. It looked like we were going to be skunked, but after we started to reel in the flat lines in preparation of heading in, a ~24 lb dolphin struck the port outrigger line and in the box he went....
Bob, Amy, and I fished the CFOA Memorial Weekend Tournament. It's a real bad sign when the best pictures from the tournament are of the sunset/sunrise variety. We caught a small Kingfish and a 20lb Barracuda. After giving up hope of catching a weighable Kingfish on Pelican flats, we ran southeast to work a color change/rip in about 200 feet of water. 1.5 hours there produced the Barracuda. So then I decided to run much further southeast to due east of Sebastian (To get 'away' from the tournament crowd. Ha! There was a big tournament going on out of Sebastian as well.) The Mirage's 40+ MPH cruising speed came in handy to cover that distance in a short time. And then we trolled all the way north to almost due east of Port Canaveral. Not a knockdown. Not a nothing. Although I did mark numerous large cones for future expeditions.
The first 2 photos were taken while I was rigging/brining 'hoo Friday night. The 3rd photo was taken right about when lines went out Saturday morning.
After not fishing for over a month, Bob and his brother Chuck got out for a half day trip. We caught/released some Kingfish and Barracuda on 8A. Here's Chuck holding a King.
I took my parents out for a short trip while they were visiting from PA. It was a little to rough to head very far out, but we saw swarms of cobia free swimming near the Canaveral Bight. We also came across this Ocean Sunfish (MolaMola), which had about half a dozen cobia shadowing it.
Back at the dock, waiting for the boat to be lifted back out into the yard....
April 24, 2001 --- I went fishing with the Insane Shrimp Posse on Capt Ken Roy's "Whopper Stopper" out of Yankeetown. We caught a variety of fish (Kingfish, Spanish Mackerel, Cobia, and Grouper). And Clammy got his butt kicked by a large sting ray. :)
