Fishing the second half: June vacation 2015

The second half of our late spring vacation brought two of my best friends down from Virginia. Tom and Glen and I have fished together for 25 + years, mostly off Virginia Beach and the Outer Banks. This is their second annual trip down to BPK, and I have looked forward to having them down again all year long!

Bo, Glen, and Tom

The weather really calmed down which made the call for heading offshore an easy one on Thursday. We had found the fish the previous weekend out beyond 700 feet, so we decided to run for the roses and head out toward the wall. It appeared to be the right call for us, because we really did not see anything interesting until we hit the lumps out in the 850 range straight out of BPK, and ran into scattered weeds and a bunch of birds. We worked the area and generally out to sea while picking up a few scattered fish, mostly schoolies.

Boys will be boys

We finally did run into a consistent bite and some better quality fish out at 1200 feet, working along the wall. There we found a good weedline, and some solid current breaks with scattered birds, and the area produced well. We had a go-pro with us, and my daughter put together a vine on one of the gaffers we caught – I call it the “hand of god” that poor mahi was minding it’s own business, and then boom – clean and jerk into the cooler!

What was really impressive out there was the billfish. We had one Blue Marlin light up and explode on the current break right in front of us, and grayhounded what seamed like forever and out of sight. We also saw at least 5 other bills’ (most likely sails) free jumping around us through the afternoon. Nothing in the baits though. We ended up with a nice group of decent dolphin, and passed up a zillion schoolies out there.

Robin & Tom with the Mahi’s

On Friday, we headed back out toward the wall for another shot at them. We put in at 900 feet under a trio of frigate birds, and right into the fish. Immediately we nailed a triple of gaffer dolphin, then were swamped with schoolies, and then hit another gaffer. The morning really was looking good when bam – we hooked and landed our first sail since we got our place down on BPK. The honors went to my wife Robin, who did a great job on the rod and reel, and was hooting and hollering the whole time! What fun!!!!

Keys sail

After we released the sail, I noticed a really bad fricking oil slick behind the boat. Scary thing 20+ miles offshore! Discretion is the better part of valor, so we packed it up and rolled the Woodytoo back home. Luckily I have spare oil on board, and we were able to get her back home without issue. Looks like I blew a seal on the oil pump, and now have it under the wrench. However, the couple hours we were out there on Friday was the best offshore action I have seen this year. We dropped down on the fish, and they were chewing! What a hoot!!!

We spend the rest of the weekend on the skiff running around inshore, and I took the guys on a tour of the Content and Sawyer keys, Upper Harbor Key, the S-curves, and out toward Bullfrog bank. We caught a bunch of Mangroves, and flat out enjoyed fishing and snorkeling in the beautiful backwaters.

So, great time, great friends and great fishing. Bummer about breaking the boat, but we stayed upbeat and optimistic and really came through with our inshore plan B. The boat is in the shop, and hopefully the damage (and repair expense) is as minimal as possible.