Fishing and Karma

I had a trip Sunday that started off as a hump trip. The weather first thing in the morning was perfect. Seven knot winds out of the Southeast and nothing on the radar. We load the boat and set off for what we hoped would be a tuna and billfish adventure. As we get ready to leave the dock the winds pick up to 12 knots or so. Ofshore it was a bit choppy, 2 to 3 footers but a little sloppy. So we start trolling in 350 foot of water to keep from pounding myself and the crew. By the time we hit 600 feet about 15 miles offshore, one of the crew is violently ill. We were in the Gulf stream with 15 knot winds quartering the current so the seas had kicked up to 2 to 4 foot with the very sloppy water in many current eddies. Weed was everywhere and birds were working. It looked good but we had to come back to the dock.

So we offload the ill crew member and head back to the reef to catch a few snapper. The yellowtails didn't want to cooperate, but I netted some ballyhoo for bottom dropping. We hit a beautiful spot in ninety foot of water that was marking to beat the band. Each of our first 5 drops was hammered within a minute of hitting the bottom. Each resulted in a brief fight and a pulled hook. Five very strong fish lost in five drifts was frustrating to say the least. We tried to anchor but the anchor line looked like a Gordian knot. With time running out we head back in with plans of a rematch the next day.

Day two we catch ballys which took longer than normal and added a few Mangrove to the box while we waited. Tons of legal but not larges Mangrove snapper everywhere in the slick which made it hard to get to the larger snapper. Still we had some dinner in the box. Then we head back to the 90 foot spot to had at the brutes that we had tangled with the day before.

The spot marked up nice but the current was in the opposite direction from the day before. After an hour of fishing without a bite, not a single bite with perfect live ballyhoo on the bottom, we move to another wreck. Same story for two more wrecks. No action at all. We move back to the shallower patches to try the mangs that were so cooperative earlier only to find the devil current. The devil current is a wind current that takes the chum one direction with a deeper tidal current that takes the baits in the opposite direction.

Desperate, we head into Hawks Channel to get a fishable current. We find our current, mark fish and lose two plus the ill crew member from the day drops a $300 dollar digital camera in the drink.

Sometimes Murphy's law takes over and you just can't win. We will take a couple days off to drown our sorrows in adult beverages and try to regain the good Karma we used to have.

Marathon in the Florida Keys should be your next fishing vacation destination. Join us for charter fishing, fishing guide trips or our fishing 101 so you can fish on your own with better success.

Tight lines,

Capt. Dallas