Went to the hump again this morning, found light current and lots of boat traffic which is probably why the tunas did not bit as well as yesterday. Did a drop for an AJ and hook either an AJ or a almacco jack that got eaten on the way up. We ran to the little hump where the same thing happened.
Success came at the vermillon snapper spot where like yesterday, we once again limited out with our two folks. Ended the day bouncing the bottom in two hundred feet and then moved in toward the Eagle wreak where we hooked a really nice bottom fish which (wait for it) got eaten by a shark. Fought the shark for quite a while and ended up pulling the hooks.
Dan and Denise said they enjoyed every moment. They will be back in a couple months.

Today was not quite as much of a struggle to find hungry fish as it has been. The tunas were just OK at the hump but then a couple mahi under a black bird showed up and we caught those. Tried a few vermillon spots with some success and then a final try at the last spot put us at our limit. Caught some nice red snapper a long the way and the cudas put up  good fights for our two anglers today.
First time deep sea for Laura and she did great as it was a little bumpy in the morning getting much nice by noon when we had to head in. Clarke was  a veteran  but it had been a while since he had been out. Looking forward to seeing them back here again sometime.

With a couple of exceptions every shark was huge tonight but that didn't stop young Cole or his brother from fighting them to the boat. The extreme outgoing tide didn't help either  but we managed to catch eight or nine by the end of the trip along with one screamer that went through the leader. Good times , good family and a beautiful evening on the water.

Kathy enjoyed watching her husband Bob catch all the fish today, different than yesterday when Shawna did all the catching.
Tunas bit at the big hump again and once we had our limit and since Bob wanted to try for a sailfish we came back in to the reef edge, caught our bait plus a few snapper and spent the last few hours watching the ballyhoo swim. I think we had a sail up as he spooked the baits but never ate. Right color and place but never got a real good look at him.
Bob and Kathy will be back again soon and we look forward to treating Bob to a yellowtail snapper outing.

Lots of big sharks along with one large barracuda made for a "not to be forgotten" evening out in whale harbor channel for Josh and Stevie. Being from Arizona and their first time in the keys this was a special event for the both of them and Stevie said the highlight of their visit.
So glad we could make that happen for them on a beautiful evening on the water.

Fortunately Dan's wife Shawna was with us to do the heavy lifting because Dan was having a difficult time with his balance and the boat motion. A deer hunter from Michigan, Dan never really felt comfortable standing while the boat was moving and although he caught some fish, he let Shawna do most of the catching.
The tunas bit well on the big hump and Shawna caught the AJ on the little hump which really tested her stamina. All in all a very successful short day with plenty of fish for these folks to take home with them. See you in two years kids!

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.

Fishing was slow again today with a few kingfish and snapper caught. There were also probably a dozen sails caught and and Mike was one of the fortunate ones that caught one. Not a huge fish but it put on a good show and was the highlight of the day. They will be back.

We fished with Paul and Tiffany a month or so ago and their son jack caught a sail. today they were fishing with their friends Jessie and Katrina and it was Jessie's turn to catch one.
The last couple sails we have caught have been up and putting on a show from the start but neither had the hooks in their mouths. Today's fish was hooked in the the mouth in the traditional way  and didn't start jumping until we were well into the fight, it shows that how a fish is hook really effects the way they fight.
There wasn't much else going on for the day although we did catch a large yellowtail and got back some kingfish heads as the sharks had eaten the bodies.
Paul has already booked us for next December so we know he and Tiffany will be back.

Getting 2 out of 3 AJs passed the sharks was better then I expected and I'll take it. We tried a lot of things that had worked well in the deep water the last week or so  but today it was not working at all.
John was out with us a week ago and it was a really good for snapper bite, today they were not biting so we had to be satisfied with our 40 and 50 lb AJs and we will wait till the bite improves.

We fished with Alicia  and Ryan a few days ago and caught a bunch of eating fish, today the target species was sailfish.
We struggled with bait at the start of the day and after getting bait spent a couple hours sailfishing without seeing one. Did a couple other things after that, catching a couple kingfish missing a few more and catching a legal mutton snapper. we still had a couple hours left when I went back to the area we had fished in the morning and put them out once more.
A little bit later a sail ate the left rigger and we were off. I had both engines in gear and throttled up as this fish was on the surface coming at the boat in a hurry. He finally settled down and although it took45 minutes we were finally able to get a picture and turn him loose.
A very happy lady with a husband that is coming back to get his opportunity.

Craig said they just wanted to catch yellowtails snapper today and if there was time some tuna. The yellowtails have not be very cooperative the last couple weeks and since the cold front last week they have been almost non existent but the temps have been coming up so I agreed to give it a shot.
It obviously work out as we caught 30 tails, a porgy and a nice mutton snapper with some of the tails were in the 2 lb range.
Craig and his folks will be back, possibly  as soon as next month and we will ready to do some more yellowtailing to keep them happy.

CP said that he didn't need any more fish to take home after Mondays catch but John said he has some folks in town and he would like to get some fish for them to eat so to change things up we decided to look for the rose porgies and do a little wahoo fishing. Caught our limit of porgies along with three (out of season) large snowy groupers, spending the balance of our time pulling the wahoo stuff and finally sailfished for the last hour or so.
Cp and Pat are planning to come back in March and there is a rumor that Joe and CP will be down in February. As always we are looking forward to their next  visit and good times.

We got a lot of help today from Nicolas and Noah with these little guys doing their parts to get these fish in the boat. Nicolas had a little problem with the seas to start but he rallied and was in high spirits after that recovery.
We fortunately extended the day from a half to a 3/4 as we started slow and it took a little while to locate fish that were hungry . Caught a few huge vermillon snapper and some silk snapper, a couple jacks and a porgy so by the end of the day there was more then enough fish for Ryan and his family to take home.
Ryan and his family will be out with us again on Monday  and we will probably stay close as the wind is supposed to return.