July 16 thru the 28th Fishing Bimini and Ft Lauderdale Aboard The Hooked Up

 

 

Our trip would consist of three different segments and each would have prizes for first second and third place.

 

I’ve got to take a second to say first of all thanks so much to Brain and Ken Sharky for inviting us. They had told us not to bring anything with us as far as bait and food was concerned but we have heard this in the past so needless to say we loaded the boats up with both food and extra bait. (BIG MISTAKE)

 

Talk about first class run operation there was more food and bait and ice and fuel than I’ve ever seen in any other fishing trip before. Now I understand why all the boats and customers/friends look forward to this every year. And as far as the other boats we had a total of 8 and a nicer bunch of Captains and Mates I’ve never seen. Incidentally if you do find yourself in Miami looking for a fishing boat let me point out a few you should consider fishing on. The Patience with Captain Ken and his mate Mike or the Wild Life with Captain Pete both out of Key Biscayne in South Miami or a little north of Biscayne by South Beach world famous Perr 5 you got the Thomas Flyer run by the two brothers Jimbo and Rick or the Sea Hawk run by a father and son team every one of these guys and boats were first class.

 

This was the first year that we were invited to this event and every one of the Captains and Mates made us feel like part of the family.

 

As far as the guys running the show; Ken, Brain, Freddy and Josh words cannot explain what a great bunch of guys. As a matter a fact I had some trouble with one of our AC units and they just went ahead and had a plane fly one in for us. I think that pretty much sums up what kind of guys we were dealing with.

 

And as far as the customers I mean FRIENDS they were just so glad to be there and away from the everyday rat race and into this beautiful blue water and island atmosphere that at times I would forget that we were supposed to be working and not having as good of a time as our guests. I think I gained 20 pounds because every time one of the guests would make a sandwich or get a soda or bag of chips they would throw one up on the bridge for me.

 

Our first day fishing started out with Jesus, Helbdio, Edvbrdo, Jorge and Javier all from Mexico.

 

We started out our day running right off shore looking for a Blue Marlin or some Dolphin Fish but within the first 10 min of fishing I could not believe what I saw a big Mako Shark jumping about 10 feet out of the water. Of course as always no one seen this but me. But this all happen within 25 feet from the bow of the boat. So I headed right for this big hole in the water and there he was about a 300 pound Mako shark for everyone to see. While we never got him to bite we all got a good look at him and what a great way to start out.

 

After trolling off shore without a bite for a few hours we decided to head in to the reefs and troll with our planner boards out and running about 45 feet down. Now the action started we were catching barracuda after barracuda and for every 5 barracudas we caught we would catch a big cero mackerel. Soon enough we had had enough of trolling so we threw the anchor and started chumming the waters. At first all we caught were trigger fish but soon enough up came the yellow tail snappers and everyone was having a ball catching fish one after another.

 

Ok now we had caught plenty of fish but none of them were big enough to weigh in for a trophy.

 

The following day we pretty much repeated what we had done the day before only this time at the end of the day we decided to try dropping one of the barracuda filets down on the ledge. Let me take a moment to explain what the edge is. This is the Bimini wall where the water goes from about 150 feet to the bottom to about 500 feet and this all happens within about 50 feet so holding the bottom was no easy task.

 

But once I figured out the wind and the current and how the boat was drifting we finally held bottom and all of a sudden BAM the rod bent over and we were HOOKED UP.

 

I can’t recall who got in the chair first but it was a big back and forth tug a war fort a good 15 min till finally up popped this monster amberjack.

 

 

Ok so now we had a fish to weigh in so we figured what the heck let’s try this again. Once again the second we got to the bottom BAM HOOKED UP again.