I took Jeff and Lesa offshore in search of Mahi. They are from Wisconsin and while Jeff has fished with me before Lesa had never been offshore fishing. We could not have picked a better day. Sunny with light breezes and almost flat seas. We started out and as usual, dropped the lines in about 300 feet and headed south. We had gone a good distance when a friend called me an told be that they had found fish on weeds at “the wall”.
The Wall is a nickname for the continental shelf and lies about 25 miles south of our dock. The water at the wall is about 900 feet deep and then drops off rapidly to thousands of feet as you continue south into the Florida Straights.
We pulled in our spread and headed out and set up on scattered lines and large rafts of weeds. It did not take long before we had our first Mahi in the box. It was a single so we continued to troll and shortly another fish hit a short bait and a small school followed it in. I grabbed the spinning rods and pitched a bait out into the school and instant hookup. Handed the rod to Lesa, baited and pitched another bait out and another hook up! Handed that one to Lesa also and told her to hang on to them while I got Jeff’s fish in the boat.
So there is Lesa, a rod attached to a jumping fighting dolphin in each hand and a big smile on her face! She now has her first and second offshore fish in one shot.
We put a few in the box from that school, let a few really small ones go and moved on when the school disappeared. We continued to troll around all the action seemed to have stopped for a while. Then we trolled past a large raft of weeds and could see Dolphin swimming out to our baits but not biting. We stopped, brought in the trolling gear, grabbed the pitch rods and backed the boat up near the weed raft. We pitched a few baits near the edge of the weeds, the Mahi came swarming out and it was game on again. These were all small fish but we had a great time with catch and release managing to keep one or two more for transport back to Wisconsin.
Time to go with a 26 mile run back in. Now you might be expecting the standard “holding the fish” photo but no, not this time. Since they were leaving the next day for home we filleted the fish, were getting ready to vacuum bag it and she said this was the picture she wanted, Lesa with her fillets..
You may have noticed that most of my posts here are about things that happen on the water. But there is a beautiful world here in the Keys underwater that we enjoy playing in.
I decided it was time to refresh and improved my Scuba skills and get some advanced ratings. I signed up for the progression of courses that lead to a Dive Master rating. Where I live many will tell you that there is only one person to train with, Janis (JB) at Underseas in Big Pine Key. I called and scheduled the first course (Advanced) and found out that I would be taking it with Alyssa, a diver who was coming from NJ to take the course with JB.
The first exercise was some pool work to go over the skills that may be needed in an emergency. Swapping regulators underwater, responding to “out of air” conditions with another diver, mask falling off, etc. We also covered some rescue skills. All stuff that you hope wont be needed but when it is…
Then it was off to the Looe Key Marine Sanctuary for open water work. Continue reading →
Jeff and his Brother in Law John were down from the north country. The first day it was too rough for my boat so they chartered a big boat down in Key West. They invited me along so I went to see how the “big boys” down there fish. Turned out that it was not any different than I do it here. The dolphin were not cooperative but we plugged away and by the end of a very bouncy day managed 2 Mahi with John bringing in the bigger of the two:
A couple of nice Cero Mackrel for the table and some Bonito that would become shark bait on the boats next trip rounded out the day
The next day was a lot calmer and we went out on urbanRenewal. Another slow day but Jeff was able to save the day with a Dolphin just before quitting time:
The fishing has been really strange and slow for this time of the year but each day one or two fish come over the rail to save the day. Hopefully tomorrow we will hook Jeff up with more fish.
Once a year Vicky comes down from Richmond, VA to visit, hang out and enjoy living by “Keys Time”. Sure, there are the morning email checks and the occasional conference call but in between it’s fishing, diving and catching the rays. This year was no exception. The weather was great, the water clear and the fish cooperating.
We went diving where Vicky demonstrated her prowess at pointing out lobsters hiding in the coral recesses. Another dive on the reef where it’s like swimming in an aquarium and, of course, some fishing.
We trolled offshore without much success and stopped at the reef on the way back in. Bingo, it was game on with Yellowtails. We didnt catch bunch but what we caught was quality. Vicky had the largest
which ended up cooked whole on the grill with an orange juice reduction as a marinade.
Great visit, great fun, come back soon Vicky !
Yesterday we had the pleasure of introducing a young man to offshore fishing. Dave (from CatIsTropic) joined me along with Larry Tyree and his 12 year old grandson Andrew for day chasing what swims on the other side of the reef.
Continue reading →
While I’d rather be out on the water on these windy days when you can’t get out food and cooking fills in for fun. This week I solved an 18 year food mystery.
Way back we had dinner at Marcel Desaulnier’s Trellis restaurant in Williamsburg, VA. Looking at the menu I honed in on Seared Tuna on Cucumber pasta. It sounded interesting an I was expecting conventional pasta maybe cooked in cucumber water. What I got was far better.
Out came this rare tuna steak on a bed of finely shredded raw cucumber.
Cucumber Pasta. I get it! Continue reading →
Feb 23, 2012
I went out with Dave on his boat Cat Is Tropic to do some trolling. Between wind and entertaining friends with back country and reef fishing he hasn’t had much chance to get offshore. Today was the day.
We set lines out in 250 off Looe Key and headed south. Between the radio chatter and talking to some other guys it was shaping up to be a real slow day but fisherman are nothing if not optimists, eh? When we hit the second 600 without a hit, baitfish, birds or weed lines we were beginning to think it might be a slow day for us too. Continue reading →
I had used cedar plugs in the NE and mid-Atlantic. I’ve had my share of hits, gathered tooth marks on them and even managed to land a fish or two along the way. But I missed way more hookups and lost more fish than I ever got to the boat. Somewhere along the way I stopped using them and the cedar plug ended up at the bottom of the tackle box. Continue reading →
I’m a member of the finance committee here at our condo association. Our meeting was this morning and this was the view through the floor to ceiling windows of the meeting room.
That boat should be my boat with me in it. Hard to concentrate on budgets when such a beautiful sea is calling to you.
Posted in Boat, Key West
|
I read “Born to Run” by Christopher McDougall just before Christmas last year. Awesome book, and in it a quote, attributed to Roger Bannister, that I think of as a formula for daily success.
…
Every morning in Africa a gazelle wakes up. It knows it must outrun the fastest lion or it will be killed.
Every morning in Africa a lion wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the slowest gazelle or it will starve.
It doesn’t matter whether you’re a lion or gazelle, when the sun comes up you’d better be running.
