Mary Lynn is finally smiling with this huge yellowtail after a rough half day on the water with her husband Joe, CP and Chris. We had a south wind and a northwest current that pulled us around just enough to put us in the trough at times and make it a little uncomfortable. Caught the tails and a big king along with assorted other stuff and although Mary Lynn was a trooper and didn't complain, CP decided after 4 hrs or so that perhaps it was time to get her back to the dock.
See all you guys again in a couple weeks!

So happy once again to have Mr Don on board the KKIV again and he brought his son CP and one of his grandsons (Christopher) along with him. Chris was high hook today catching the biggest yellowtail and the most in our half day outing.
CP will be back again next month with more of the family and as always we look forward to their next visit.

Ferdy came all the way from the Netherlands to fish with the KK on an evening Shark trip. Actually Ferdy was vacationing in the keys and gave me a call because he wanted to hook into something almost as big as him.
We caught 5 big sharks and one diamond ray for the evening and had a really good time with our new friend from the Netherlands.

Amanda wanted snapper for dinner, or should I say dinners. The tails were not very cooperative so we headed out to the deep to try the silk snapper and although they started somewhat small we were able to find a bunch of decent size fish for Amanda as her hubby to crank up.

Split party today with Mitch and Susan from Texas and Steve from Michigan ( where it is still snowing ). No current so the tails didn't bite well but we caught close to our limit and a good time was had by all , including mate Dave who got invited in for the picture.

When the yellowtail snapper go into spawn mode they get a lot easier to catch and with almost perfect conditions and the spawning it was as good as it gets. Our group from GAF caught 30 or so and  we added to the snapper catch with another ten vermillons out in the deeper water.

A 50 lb AJ on conventional  tackle can be tough but Brant caught this one on a spinning rod and it wore him down. Short day yesterday and current into the wind, so we went for broke and managed to catch a few nice vermillon snapper and the AJ to put smiles on their faces.

Another fast and furious evening out in whale harbor channel with a couple serious fishermen. Bailey really wanted a big shark but his dad Bill kept hooking up the large ones. It wasn't until the evening was almost over that Bailey got tied up with one over 100 lbs, I'm still not sure what was going on but Bailey didn't want a rod belt and I'm positive ended up with a huge bruise after fighting that big shark.... kids!!
Another good night on the water with a father and son team.

Collin was feeling the burn last evening, cranking in that big shark he wanted to catch but he wasn't going to give up that rod for anything or anyone.
Another great family from Michigan down in the keys to escape their never ending winter up there. It was a great evening catching shark after shark for all that wanted to catch one.

Pretty evening out in whale harbor channel with John, Nick and Maria. Lots of sharks but not much happening with the tarpon yet.

Tony called me up this morning wanting to know if I was available which most days would be a no but I happened to have an open day. Tried the permit at the wreck to start but did not see them and ended up at the tarpon hole where the yellowtails bit very well. Great family with more kids that love to fish.

Only the second lemon shark I've caught in whale harbor channel in all the years I've fished it was caught last evening. We had neighbors Vickie, Drew and Ginny out with us and while the wind and rain livened things up for an hour or so a good time was had by all.

These guys are serious anglers. Lori told me that her two boys were fishing fanatics and she made a believer out of me on the evening trip today. It was a lot slower then last evening but we did catch some smaller sharks early and one humongous one late to finish up.

John wanted to catch something big, so we were swinging for the walls this morning after catching our ballyhoo and looking for that April sailfish bite. Fortunately there has been a decent late bite this year and 15 minutes after we got the baits out, up came our sailfish. Unfortunately this fish was big and mean and the battle raged on for quite a while until we were able to finally get the release.
We spent a little time after that battle to catch dinner and then finally had to take the guys back the marina so they could catch that plane ride to NJ.

John is pretty happy hooked up again with a big shark. Anthony, Joe and their sons will sleep well tonight after getting wore down catching sharks with us this evening. Hopefully we will get to wear them down again tomorrow on some more big fish.

More good fun with Tammy, her kids and related kids on the afternoon trip. We had clean water but the yellows still bit amazingly well. We had a couple folks not feeling well and shortened the trip a bit but overall these guys { and Girl ) did great, learning the art of yellowtail fishing in difficult conditions.

Kyle, Kyle's son and Kyle's sad all caught snapper with us today on our morning half. Tried the yellowtailing first but there was no current so we ended up bouncing the bottom and these nice muttons found us

Another fun evening on the water with 3 young adults and the mom and dad. Numerous big sharks were hooked up and caught but the highlight was a 40 lb tarpon that we caught at the very end of the trip
I don't see any cold fronts headed our way in the near future to drop the water temps so hopefully this will be the start of our tarpon run this year.

On morning many years ago ago Dr Joe, his wife Suzanne and another couple left Tavernier in their boat to go fishing. It was rough, their boat took on water and sank  in 300 ft of water with no one in sight.
I was working on a boat called the Challenger at the time and late that afternoon we were returning home after a day of fishing. We had heard no reports from the Coast Guard of a boat sinking but fortunately heard them yelling over the sound of our engines, located them and got them safely on board. Needless to say they were very happy to see us.
I had fished with them a number of times  on the Challenger over the years but this was the first time they fished with me on the KKIV. Joe said it had been 23 years since that fateful day but he had recently sold his boat and planned on many more trips with us in the future.

This is a fisherman. Theo never stopped fishing all day long and probably caught 40 fish during our full day on the water ( that is counting the ballyhoo he was catching by hand out of the live well ). He has his own rod and reel, knows how to use them and is going to be awesome in a few years when his attention span improve a little.

Bobby and his guys fish with me fairly regular and although we struggled some today we caught some really nice vermillon snapper and ended the day in good shape. Had one of those days when the hooks just would not stay in the fish, on the bright side the wind is coming down and after days of abuse we are finally getting some decent weather.

We had this little lady, Chloe, out last evening for our shark trip and she caught the biggest, most and most unique. I just love seeing younger folks excited and enthusiastic about fishing and Chloe showed us both.

Started out with a couple smaller sharks but they just kept getting bigger as the evening went on. Ashley's family was kept busy as even Charlie lost the count on the number of sharks caught. We get to take some of these folks off shore on Thursday, it should be fun!

Tim showed up all by himself to enjoy the day and catch some fish, he caught fish and we all enjoyed the beautiful day. We did go out to 400 ft looking for mahi as Tim had never caught one and if there was a chance he wanted to try, unfortunately the only mahi I heard about were 20 miles off shore and with the short day we just weren't going to be able to get there.

My daughter Sarah got married yesterday afternoon near Orlando. The ceremony was an out door event and we could not have ask for a more beautiful setting or weather. Pati and I welcome Sarah new husband Ross Fultz into our family and wish the two of them the very best in new future together.