Robin and I spent Father’s Day generally goofing off. We put the top up on the lil woody and scooted out to the Atlantic to snorkel on some big coral heads.
On our way we went through some new territory and cut through the pass at cooks island. A couple cool things – it cuts off about 3 miles, it dumps you in the Atlantic by Beyoncé’s house, and most important I only ran aground once!
Once through cook island pass you are in a bunch of big coral heads that are supposedly full of hogfish. Well I saw one 6 inch hogfish, but the water was gin clear and the coral beautiful! Look at this handsome devil!
Thunderstorms forced us to go to our backup plan, so we ran down thru no name bridge and over to rocky channel. We caught a bunch of snapper throwing gulps, only one cooler worthy credit to robin.
Onward we went and ended circumnavigating big pine to the east and north. Long way on the lil woody! Took some pictures of the sights. Ended up with 1 more snapper in the cooler, this time mine!
Got the call on Wednesday that the boat was fixed and ready to go back in the water. So the Robin and I scrambled and headed back down Thursday night. We launched her on Friday at my neighbor Alan’s ramp and ran her down to Dolphin Marina for a quick test drive and filled her with fuel. I want to give a shameless plug for Marshall and his team at Fast Action Marine on Big Pine. He completed the job at the price and in the time line he quoted me, and did an outstanding job. The Woodytoo has a 12 year old Yamaha F225, and the oil pump seals failed blowing oil all over everything. We nursed her back home from way offshore a couple weeks ago by adding oil and watching things closely. The oil pump is located in the mid-section of the engine and getting to it was more that I wanted to handle myself. Looks to me like I have found my go-to mechanic here on Big Pine!
My welcoming committee met me Thursday night when we got to the house. I went to put some stuff in the garbage and was surrounded by the “elusive and endangered” key deer. There was nine in total in this group …
Saturday morning we loaded up and headed offshore. The crew for the day was my wife Robin, neighbor Alan, his best friend Jamie and myself. The water was beautiful, and a lot flatter than I had expected.
The he reports that we got from folks matched what I was seeing on the temp SST charts and we headed out deep. We saw absolutely nothing from the reef all the way offshore, and I finally throttled down at the wall. We spent the morning empty handed, working scattered weeds and birds from 1200 to 800 feet.
As the afternoon sun got hot hot things got better and we saw more and more bird and bait activity. Big as life the bit finally turned on like someone threw a switch! We ended up being escorted by a trio of frigate birds that hung with us for several hours.
We never saw anything big, but ended with a nice box full of fish. Best part was the good company. It was great to get to know Alan better, and the banter between he and Jamie was hilarious! Those guys are welcome company with Robin and I anytime!
Special callout to our dog Rebel … he loves to photobomb the fish pics!
The end result, robin made some killer open faced mahi sandwiches! Yowsers!
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.
My wife and I are down in BPK for two weeks that are kind of split in half. This past week our daughter joined us, she is currently living in Texas doing a PHD program at Texas Tech in Lubbock. She is certainly happy to get away from all the storms out there, and also get back on salty water! She grew up fishing and spent most of her early years either on a horse, or with a rod and reel in her hand.
Friday the wind was still honking, so we took the skiff up to the content keys area and did some touring, drifted the flats, and snorkeling. I don’t think the water can be any prettier than this …..
When the tide turned around we spent the afternoon drifting some flats. My wife caught this tasty mutton throwing a gulp shrimp on 12 pound test. Really great fight in 3 foot of water with that light rod! We also picked up a bunch of mangroves, and had a nice snapper dinner!
Saturday, we took the woodytoo offshore, seas were crazy sloppy, kind of all over the place, and the weeds were thick and scattered. So it made it difficult in cockpit but we managed through it. We started in close without any luck and worked our way out generally to the humps straight south of looe key. Very, very slow all morning. When we got to 650 ish and we found some better weed lines, a bunch of birds, and started picking up dolphin. In the middle of the flurry, we had a blue marlin smash a blue and white Hawaiian eye rigged with a horse ballyhoo on the short rigger but it did not come tight. We freespooled and he picked it up again and we had it for about 15 seconds peeling line and then gone again. Close!!! When we got back to the house my daughter decided to beat me with a fish … I guess she was mad at me for missing the blue one!
Sunday calm winds and seas made for a wonderful ride! We ran straight out to the 650 mark and again found scattered weeds and nothing really biting! Do these fish have keys disease? They don’t seem to want to bite until the afternoon! We ended up running out toward the wall, and found a couple awesome weedlines in 850 or so and started steadily picking up fish. There always seems to be a story with us – but I put my wahoo planer down and it got wacked hard by a decent dolphin. I have the drag cranked hard on that outfit so the fish waterski’d straight to the surface. As I wound it in toward the boat what looked like a mako wide head and shoulders came grayhounding up from behind it and smashed the fish. Don’t know for sure about if it was a mako or not, it was certainly big and acted like one. I run that rig on wire, too bad he missed the hook! End result:
There you go, long winded fish story, but a lot on! Next week I have some of my old navy buddies coming down and we will do it again! Best part of it all this week was spending quality time with my girls, I am a lucky guy!
Bo
Gorham Fishing Team 