A screaming west current and a hard north wind made for interesting conditions today but we got lucky and caught some nice size kingfish, cero mackerel and a couple bonitos.
We had a good time with Landon and his clients who are in the freshwater pond management business, not exactly  saltwater aquarium stuff (my back round) but close enough.
The guys were really happy to be in Florida as they are all from one of those frozen northern states.

Second time this week we have fished Kevin and his family and once again had a great time with them. Along with the regular sharks we catch this big cuda and a couple lemon sharks. Great people we will see again.

CP said he could use some  tuna to take home along with all the snapper fillets we cut for him a few days ago so off we went to the hump. Small tunas but we caught our limit, one mahi and a few other bottom fish rounded out the day.
See you guys again in a month or so.

Ed and his crew were interested in catching a sail so we started at Conch with our ballyhoos out waiting for a bite. After a hour of nothing and seeing no one else hook-up, we headed up to pickles reef. Caught a couple muttons and a couple kingfish fought a really good fish for awhile before it went away and then moved on to a couple vermillon spots. The vermillons bit OK but they were small although we did catch a nice red grouper while catching verms.
That was about it for this day and we will be out with this group again tomorrow but with a different game plan.

Ben and his guys just wanted something big to tug on today and this cabera snapper was just what we needed to fill that request . He weighed in at 37 lbs, came out of 300 ft of water and it's the biggest cabera snapper I have ever caught by far.
We also caught some smaller mangrove snapper, five mahi and some very large cudas.  The guys will have plenty of fish for the rest of their stay this week and probably fish to take back up north with them.

Our trip on Saturday was not very productive, fun and entertaining  but fishing was difficult, today once we found the fish and they were hungry it was game on.
Caught a couple tunas at the hump at the beginning but it was slow so we tried the bottom for the vermillons, not happening there either it was starting to look a lot like Saturday, then it changed. We started catching silk snapper and then red porgies. Probably caught 20 snowy grouper and a couple yellowedge groupers to go with them. Most of the snowys were fairly small but we did catch a few 12 pounders.
All in all a great fun day with Joe and CP. They have one more day at the end of the week to fish with us, hopefully the weather holds.

Yesterday was pretty depressing as we were halfway to the bait spot when the newly rebuilt transmission had an internal "catastrophic" failure and we limped back home on one engine. Our party went out on another boat while we tried to figure out how to get up and running again as quickly as possible.
Diesel Dan showed up an hour after I called him and between the three of us we pulled the broken trainy out and put back in the old transmission that still worked but had a delay when shifting. Eight o'clock last night we sea trialed and this morning young Dan, Micah and Rick went fishing with us and the reward was that the youngster got to  catch two sails at conch reef before nine o'clock.
Needless to say we were all pretty happy with a working trainy and catching two sailfish but we didn't stop there and topped off our short day catching a nice mess of yellowtail snapper for the celebratory dinner this evening.
Shout out to the Dan the Diesel Doctor for dropping everything to get us up and running again!!

We started sailfishing early this morning and watched another boat catch one but after a hour or so I had had enough and off we went out to the deep water.
Caught a big porgy right off on our first drop and we were doing our second drop when the phone rang. I'm on the phone with a client when I see this sailfish come out of the water, obviously hooked up, not at all happy with his situation, tailwalking and coming at the boat at 60 mph. I hung up on the poor lady, ran the boat ahead of the fish as fast as I could until everything finally settled down and then we fought the fish on the electric until we had it next to the boat and got the release. Crazy!
Later we ended up at the hump catching some big vermillon snapper, almaco jacks, rudder fish and a few silk snapper. Glenda, and Katrina caught almost all the fish today although we did have their husbands on board it was obviously a ladies fishing day. Really good times with these folks , until next time!

We tried a couple spots once again before we ended up at the same area as yesterday where we caught our yellowtails. Steve and Jason were patience as we tried the non-producing spots but once we found the tails  they made quick work of catching their limits. Not huge fish but good action and pretty much a fish every drift.
Enjoyed our day with Jason and Steve and hopefully we will see them again when they can escape the great state of Washington (although next time they can leave the rain at home).

Bob was high hook today winning the fish pool with this monster yellowtail snapper. He waited till the very end of the day, until the other anglers thought it was over and then he went to work on the big one.
We had a great time today with John, Mike and their dad Bob and although once again it was a struggle to find biting fish we pulled it out at the very end of the day. We found a place where the yellowtail were biting, mixed sizes but there were some really nice fish like this big one Bob is holding.
Mike a rough day but he was a trooper and hung in there throughout the entire day making friends with our garbage can and not letting it get more than an arms length away.
Not sure we will see Mike anytime soon but Bob and John will be back.

Dinner and a show, but not the show we were looking for as a 120 lb bull shark ate a mutton that Stu was trying to get off the bottom and got himself hooked. Usually when this happens we never see the shark before the line parts but Stu fought this fish right to the boat so we got to get a good look at him.
It has not been easy fishing the last few days after the recent heavy winds but we kept Sue and Stu  busy on their 3/4 day and sent them off to the local restaurant with some great eating fish and they were also taking the kingfish to a friend to have them smoked. See you again soon folks.

Doing a late day charter isn't ideal in my opinion but That is what Steve and Donna could do so out we went. We did have a sail bite and good action with bonitos but this mutton was our saving grace.