Captain Dave took joe and family out this evening for our evening shark/tarpon trip and along with a bunch of sharks, they caught this crevalle Jack, a barracuda and a red grouper. You just never know what will show in whale harbor channel.
A good time was had by all and Joe and his family will be back soon for a longer trip.
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The nicer mahi were here for a day and mostly gone the next but the beautiful weather has stayed and we are very thankful for that.
I am taking a few days off but captain Dave did a fine job yesterday catching fish for Joe and his better half. Dave told me the tuna bite was decent with a good show by the sharks and the mahi were there but they had to sort though them to get the ones that were legal.


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I hope this is not an aberration and the mahi are here to stay for a while because at 10 this morning we had 6 tunas (KK 6 / sharks 0) and 15 mahi in the boat and because of that, my stress levels were close to zero. We went on to catch another 15 or so mahi thru out the day turning a few back to grow up and maybe to be harvested next year.
Jeff, Jeff, Dave, Jeremy and Tom had a great time and will be back next year for another go, hopefully they won't forget everything Dave taught them today.

We had a really good time with Josh and his buds. Once again there was wind and the usual sharks at the hump but we caught a few tunas and then moved on finding single mahi under the birds for the most part. Tomorrow is supposed to be the start of our good weather hopefully.

The yellowtails bit well in the shallow water today. It was windy and standing was a little challenging but Jeff and his group did well catching close to our limit in a few hours. Our second day with this group is Sunday and the weather forecasters promise us a low wind day with plenty of sunshine, can't wait!

 Joe and CP brought Christopher (CP's son) down for a fishing trip this week to celebrate his 32(?) birthday. The day started with wind and rain but quickly got much better so off we went not realizing that that was not the last of the bad weather.
Caught the tunas at the hump ,beating the sharks by a fair margin and then headed off to find the mahi. A storm was building to the east just as I was getting to numerous sets of birds (and fish I hoped) and then the storm hit. The storm had 35 knot wind with rain in it and all the schools of fish we found (except for two) were small. We took a beating on the way home after the storm subsided but got home safely with no problems.
Chris was able to cleanse his upper digestive track on numerous occasions throughout the day and I'm sure he appreciates his physical renewal.
Always a pleasure having Joe and the Kalises on board.

A very good day on the water with another two couples, not from Texas this time but from our neighboring state of Georgia. The waves were a little rough on Brad but he hung in there for the 3/4 day and even participated in catching some of the many fish we hooked.
The sharks were bad once again, we fed too many tunas to them but once again we were able to catch our limit.
At the end a good time was had by most everyone, even Brad!

Last evening we took the two couples from the day before out on our shark/tarpon trip. It started slow but when the sharks started to bite it was non-stop game on. No tarpon bites but we did have a couple big sharks on that we could not stop.
The ladies did great, out fishing the guys 2 to 1 as so often happens and everyone said the would be back when the sailfish show.

A lot of captains will not leave the dock with bananas on board as they think they are bad luck. Today we had a nice bunch of bananas sitting in the galley on the counter and it did faze me at all. I am not a believer in the superstition and today we once again disproved the myth.
Caught the tunas at the hump losing  6 to the sharks but catching 6 also, we went out from there to 16 miles or so and started catching the mahi. Not huge numbers but ended up with some heavy lifters and schoolies for our folks from Texas to take back home with them.
They are fishing us again tomorrow night on the shark/tarpon trip and I think I'll ask them to bring some bananas again for good luck.

It was non-stop for the first hour and a half, lots of sharks, a sting ray and a big barracuda kept Tyler and Rivi very busy. It slowed down towards the end of the evening as the tide slackened but that was okay too because the conversation was good and the passing boats were  entertaining.
We really enjoyed our time with these folks and hope their plans to come back soon work out.

The tunas at the hump bit poorly (lots of traffic) but the first patch we came to at 20 miles had a  bunch of mahi on it and we were able to keep a dozen out of that school.  A few other patches and a weed line helped bring the total up to 20 which was our limit.
Tali and Tyler had a great time and quickly learned what is involved with catching a lot of mahi in a hurry! We are stay in close tomorrow and then doing a shark/tarpon trip in the afternoon with these two, should be fun.

We were able to get eight tunas passed them today but we took a beating getting those to the boat. Curtis and Malinda were overjoyed that they were able to catch tunas today but I just wish we didn't have to feed as many as we do to the sharks to catch the few that they allow us.

The sharks brought on their best catchers today and with the slow tuna bite we never got one passed them. We finally gave in and headed off shore where we ran into a big school of mahi and although  a lot were just undersized we were able to keep eight of them.
Brian and Cat had never caught a mahi before so getting to experience having 4 or more fish hooked up all the time, fish jumping, line tangles and all the rest that goes on with catching a school of mahi was exactly what they wanted.
Good people, we will see them again.

We won today, beating the sharks 10 to 3 in the morning game. Terry and Kimberly did a great job winding fast and hard to get the tunas to the boat before the sharks could catch them. We were going to do a 3/4 day but Kimberly decided to go for the half and that let us get some things done on the boat that needed addressing. See you folks in a couple months, we enjoyed our morning with you.

Rick had a health scare recently so when he called and said he was going to be here today to fish with Eric we were overjoyed. He has been recovering for a couple months and he is close to 100%,  we look forward to many more good days on the water with him.
The sharks were hard on us today at the hump and although we found a lot of mahi, most of them were small but it was a beautiful day on the water after all the rain that Fred sent us and it was just good to be away from the dock .

Today we beat the sharks 10 to 1, ten for us one for the sharks. I then found a pallet floating five minutes after leaving the hump, caught 4 mahi off it and continued to find mahi throughout the day, some we could keep some were too small but overall a much improved mahi bite from what we have had recently.
Harry, Cindy and Jenifer were great even with the rougher seas, although Harry and Jenifer did most (or all)  of the angling  today as Cindy sat out the winding.
Harry is planning his next trip for this fall. Looking forward to having them on board again.

Brad and his family came to fish and the got their fill this evening, catching 19 sharks and jumping off one big tarpon. They will be back!

The day started bad with my fill in mate not showing (Dave is taking a well deserved vacation). He finally showed almost a hour late and we headed to the hump to fight the sharks for a few tunas. It's about one to one as the sharks get to eat one and we get to boat one, I was pretty happy that we were able to get 7 in the boat before they shut down and we then headed back to the reef.
Caught a few yellowtails at the reef, lost a $300 cast net trying to catch ballyhoo, caught the ballyhoo at the next spot but couldn't get my anchor off the bottom (hopefully it will get recovered this week) and had to cut the anchor line leaving $400 on the bottom. After that we caught a couple kingfish and at the last minute before heading home, the last bait in the water, hooked up this 20 lb African Pompano to end the day on a very high note.
Francis and her family will definitely be back as they had the time of their lives and went home with great memories. I'll just have to try to do the same, tomorrow's another fresh day.

Not much of any particular species today. We worked really hard to find what we did and did as well as most all the charter boats. Fishing is difficult right now, maybe tomorrow will be better.
Our neighbors  Joe, Duane and Ron went out with us today and I hope the next time they go with us we crush whatever we are going after. They were very patient today but they also had been warned that fishing was a little difficult right now so it wasn't a great surprise to them.

It's been three years since we had Joe and some of his family on board and it was good to see them once again. Fishing was a lot better on the last trip with them but we did catch our limit of tuna and a couple mahi today. The weather has been wonderful over the last couple weeks but we may get some wind in the near future which I hope bring the mahi back, we will see.

In talking to Chris this morning we decided to get dinner first , try the tunas and then look for mahi. The amazing thing was that it all worked and it all worked well as we caught 20 snapper, 8 tunas and 3 mahi in the first few hours.
 We were on the way out to the deeper water after catching the tunas when I decided to make the turn back toward shore (not feeling good about going any farther out) and a 25 lb wahoo ate the rigger. We caught him and a little while later found a bird with 4 heavy lifters under it and caught those.
Spent another hour or so looking for more mahi when Chris said "let's head for the marina as we have all the fish we really need" so we headed in a little early to get the fish cleaned and get ready for tomorrow charter.
Thanks Chris, had a great time with you and your sons, see you next time.

April's son and young Hunter (filling in for Dave tonight) fight one of many sharks we caught and released this evening

Caught the snapper early this morning and struggled after that until we sent a cigar minnow down on a light rod for a almaco jack. I didn't expect a 50 lb amberjack to eat that minnow . The boys did a great  job getting the jack to the surface while I was thinking there was no way the sharks were going to let it happen, but they did.

Big Al brought the big stuff today in hopes of catching the big fish but the big bite at 14 knots turned out to be a big barracuda and not the big wahoo we were hoping for.
Had a chance to spend some time with Aaron today which was nice as it has been many years since we last saw each other. We did find a vertical tree branch which had mahi on it and we caught 9 of those and then found a piece of bamboo that could only gave us one more. Switched over to the big lures to finish up but with the exception of the cuda we didn't get to see that big bite we were looking for.
Sounds as though we will be seeing more of Al in the future if his plans work out. Looking forward to it.