I did it again, I let things lapse a bit. It sure is easier when I keep up with it! Bare with me, this is a long post, and it was a tough one to get through. How to begin …
As most of you know we lost my Mom last month. It was an event that knocked the breath out of all of us, but we pulled together as a family, and celebrated her life together. Mom loved family, friends, food, her community and the water above all else! One of her sayings was “We are all blessed for our times on the water, but we are truly blessed to live on the water!”
She loved her condo on the Chesapeake Bay at Gwynn’s Island Virginia. They had the dining table at the windows looking down across Milford Haven toward the Hole In The Wall, and at night you could see the lights on Wolf Trap light. And all the seafood! Lordy lordy shrimp, crabs, oysters, clams, mussels, and fish of all types (I never saw her pass up a rare tuna steak!). All cooked as simply and delicately as possible! One day she and dad met us at the dock after tuna fishing, and she brought soy and wasabi. We had sushi right there at the cleaning table!
Thank you momma for showing us all that goodness!! Our memories together are precious and will be cherished forever!
Our camping saga begins!
I know this is a site about fishing, but Robin and I got COVID fever and were tired of not seeing our grandbaby Lilly! So we bought an RV, tricked it out a bit, and took off cross country for a great visit to Lexington Kentucky to visit Kyle, Laura and Lilly.
On the way to and fro, we took our time and drove “under” Cumberland Gap and visited the Smokey Mountains in Tennessee, stopped at a really nice park in Georgia, went to Jekyll Island on the coast and finally made the mad dash back to the Keys.
Back to fishing!
This has been a tough summer fishing since hurricane season started. We had several storm scares but thank heavens no direct hits. The poor folks on the gulf coast, they have had it rough. Around here in the keys it has been rainy/stormy since August, and one day we got 10.5 inches of rain! I have had to replace bilge pumps and float switches on both boats!
We did get out a couple times. Robin and I took the WoodyToo offshore for a day, and it was relatively dead out there. Finally, after hours of nothing we found a wooden beam floating around, and boom game on! 6 lines were in the water, 5 hooked up, and we landed 3. All on the surface caught on trolled ballyhoo. Nothing at all wrong with schoolie dolphin for dinner!
I also made a huge process upgrade. Boat gas delivered to the house!?! How cool is that?
Paul gave me the number of his fuel guy, called him up, they showed up the next day. Rec 90 fuel, 100 gallons minimum, better price that the Valero in Marathon, easy as pie! These guys have a new customer in me for sure. They even filled up my empty fuel cans, so both little and big boats taken care of!
Fall fishing begins ….
With fall hitting, things change around here. The winds are up, and the water is cooling down a bit. That brings bait in the backwaters and on the flats. Before too long, after our first cold fronts, the bait will push out to the Atlantic, which will stack the sportfish up on the reef. But for now, it is time to follow the big tides into the mangrove shorelines and fish!
Pilchards are the bait of choice, and I have been learning and practicing how to throw the cast net. I am getting better … but still throw my share of bananas!
With a load of pilchards in the live well, Robin cleaned up on a pair of redfish, both in the slot limit. I also caught a small goliath that was hanging under a mangrove root in less than a foot of water. We had one of the redfish for dinner and released the other. We also saw some big snook, small tarpon, and a bunch of sharks in the skinny water. Lots of fun for sure!
Fall brings Stone Crabs!
October 15 is the opening of stone Crab season, which have to be my favorite shellfish. It is a trap fishery and for recreational folks and we are allowed 5 traps a per person. With Paul previously a commercial crab fisherman, he is the resident expert so we joined forces with him and pooled our traps together giving us a nice set. Weekend before last, we checked the traps for the first time since the season opened.
First things first, we needed bait for the traps. Folks use hogs feet, or fish parts, for bait, and I am usually asked to keep all the lady fish along with the heads and trimmings from anything we catch. Bottom line, stinky and cheap is the key. Paul’s solution to the bait is harvest stingrays. How do you get them? I thought you would never ask!!
There we were (all good stories start this way), headed out onto the flats in Paul’s bully boat with 2 old speargun spears lashed to poles with floats tied on them.
We cruised the flats on a plane looking for tell tale mud “puffs” from stingrays getting spooked by the boat. As soon as we spot one, turn around and try to sight him. Then get in close and hit them with the harpoon. The ray takes off, we chase the float down and get a gaff in him and harvest the ray as quickly as possible.
I have to say it was quite entertaining, a lot of hard work, and it is crazy how many rays are out there. We ended up with 2 both around 50 pounds, and after cleaning them we filled 120-quart cooler with enough bait to fill all of our crab traps (plus some leftover).
Sunday morning, we went and pulled the traps. Paul invited his friend Matt to join us so we had one boat driver and two trap pullers. It went pretty much like you expect, find the trapline, grab the buoy, pull the trap up on the boat, harvest the crab claws, rebait and reset the trap.
It is a cool and sustainable fishery, if you pull the claw right, the crab swims away with the only thing hurt being his pride! I think we did great, out of 17 traps we harvested around 10 pounds of claws. All different sizes with a bunch of really big ones!
Best part about harvesting stone crabs … dinner! We made it a neighborhood event and feast! Lots of fun, awesome eats and great company!
Fishing upgrades!
Next on the hit parade, is “hardening” the WoodyToo and getting serious about our deep bottom fishing. We invited Paul, Thuy and the girls over to go swimming, and Paul and I sat down and had a few beers and talked fishing (imagine that).
We focused on two things, first I started a log and picked Paul’s brain and documented each fish species I could think of along with the when, where and how to find and catch them. Where we live, pretty much every fish species that lives in the tropical atlantic will swim within striking distance of our island. Time to get serious, after all, that is why we live here! I plan on using this blog to record our progress and call out our successes and failures.
It begins with The Book!
Second, Paul dissected my fishing setup on the WoodyToo in terms of deep-water fishing. The results (this go-around anyway –. I needed to revamp the anchoring system, improve my live well water flow capacity, and work through cockpit and running lights (we are leaving the dock earlier and earlier, and I need some form of headlights).
We also made the command decision that we have to try for a swordfish (see the previous paragraph) which means taking deep dropping to a new level.
Off to the races – or upgrades! Robin pretty much shook her head, told me I was nuts, confirmed that I will never be able to retire, and then looked the other way.
I bought a 35 gallon Husky trash can, 600 feet of ½ inch anchor line, 30 foot BBB chain, got my polyball and ring together and boom, new anchor system! With 600 feet of anchor line, we should be able to anchor in 300 feet of water (given a decent sea state).
I also upgraded my livewell pump from 800 gallon per hour to 1100 GPH. I am am still thinking through the lighting setup.
Game on
Finally, on Halloween, we finally got the weather window we needed to get offshore and try the new goodies. Paul, Matt and I were the crew (Robin pretty much said “have fun boys!).
The plan was to drop anchor in 260 feet of water on some structure where we caught a couple vermilion snapper a couple months ago. Drop chum sand-balls, and live baitfish looking for an early morning Mutton Snapper bite. Then throttle up and head for “the wall” pulling Wahoo baits on the high-speed troll. Once we hit the wall make a couple Swordfish drifts, and then high-speed troll back in, and call it a day.
Preparation for the trip was awesome! Matt went to Cudjoe Sales and picked up some Mac-Daddy wahoo baits (Yozori Bonita, and some big lip divers),
Paul picked up hooks and big glow squid skirts. I had chum and a couple bonita in the freezer. We had a rigging party Friday night and put the pieces together and loaded the boat.
Saturday morning came and out to sea we went. Saturday afternoon came and we came back home to the lift. That is how many fish we caught ☹. Heavy sigh …
We did have a great day, and I have to tell fishing stories wether we catch them or not!
We got out and anchored on the Vermillion spot. The depth finder was lit up, I mean beautiful. Sandballs in the water, fish came in under the boat. Live baits down – nothing. We added in some cut bait, I even put down dolphin roe …. Nothing. Paul tied up a chicken rig (three dropper loops with small hooks) tipped with squid, dropped it and filled up all 3 hooks with Amilico Jacks. Enough said time to move on….
We ended up anchoring twice on the spot, and the new anchor system really worked well. On our first drop we put almost all 600 feet of the line in the water!
Off we go toward the wall, with a spread of three wahoo baits in the water, the Yozuri, one of my Red and Black weighted squids, and a 50 foot lipped diver. For a high-speed troll, the boat runs best at about 8.5 – 9 knots and at that speed it was an hour and a half run out to the edge.
The spread really ran well, no tangle issues, a ton of strain on the tackle, but it all ran smoothly. About halfway out, I noticed the Yozuri rod looked like it lost tension. We pulled it in and sure enough the lure was gone … closer examination shows we were bit off. I had crimped the lure on brand new 250# stranded steel cable, and the break was as clean as if you did it with side cutters. Absolutely a wahoo bite, the reel did not even make a chirp.
We trolled on out to the wall and set out the deep drop baits for swordfish.
This is as technical a fishery as it gets (not for the faint of hearts). There is plenty of opportunity to really screw it up, and the real potential of hooking an absolute beast. On top of that, it was our first time dropping for swords, so the learning hats were on tight.
The rig we used is pictured below:
We sewed a bait (whole squid and a Bonita belly) onto a hook with a glow rubber squid-skirt on top of it using a 400 pound test leader. We attached the bait rig to a 150 foot 250 pound test wind on leader that I tied Friday night. 6 foot in front of the bait, we hooked a deep drop disco flashing light using a long line clip, 25 feet in front of that another clipped on disco light, and then we clipped an 8 pound weight at the leader to braid connection point.
We figured out the drift conditions in the sea state, current and wind, and Paul moved us to where the drift would take us east paralleling the middle of the wall in 1500 feet of water.
The objective is never allow any slack in the rig, and to get it down to 100 feet off the bottom. Then control the boat and drift to keep the line straight up an down.
Paul put the boat in gear slowly, and Matt and I fed the bait and leader out behind the boat, and down, down, down it went using the electric reel until it hit 500 meters (my line counter is only in meters – so we had to do that math too). We then eased off the throttle and kept the drift straight until the line swung down directly under us. Once the line was straight up and down, I let the rig all the way until we bounced on the bottom, and then I pulled it 100 feet back up indexing us to the right depth.
The second part of all this is the preparation for if we hooked one! We knew we were under-tackled. My electric reel is pretty nice, but if we hooked into a 400 pound swordfish we would be in for a ride and a half. So we tried to get the odds in our favor a bit. My brother-in-law gave me our old Fly-Gaff which is an 8 foot shaft with a removable gaff head tied to 20 foot of line. Theory being get the gaff head in the fish, and tie the line off to a cleat on the boat. Old-school stuff there!
Paul also borrowed a harpoon from a buddy of his with 500 feet of line attached to the dart. We would tie the harpoon to my poly-ball, hit the fish with the dart and let him take the whole thing out to sea if he wanted to and we would chase the polyball down like a bobber.
We spent 3 hours and made 2 drifts. First drift with the squid bait, and the second with a Bonita belly, but no bites either time.
The rig and setup ran flawlessly. Both times when we brought the baits up, there were no tangles and everything looked great. We were in the right spot and the drift lines were perfect. Bottom line, we were on our game, we fished where they lived, and the bait was what they eat. That is fishing, we just did not get a bite.
We trolled on back home, and made it in safe and without issues, other than an empty fish box. Looking forward to trying it again!
Phew – that is all folks for the update. Will do my best to keep them coming!
Gorham Fishing Team 