Ft. Lauderdale and the Bahamas

October 14th, 2009

The Philadelphia Flyers are in town, and the whole team set up a 5 boat convention, with 6 teammates on each boat. The coordinator made it a lot of fun. They turned it into a little tournament… biggest fish, most fish and smallest fish. The stage was set!

We all left this afternoon, out of A Dock, at the Bahia Mar, and headed out the inlet right out in front of Fort Lauderdale. Chris, my full time guy, took the day off, so first mate extraordinaire, Rick “Fooster” joined us instead. We were the first ones out to the rip.

Ricky deployed the baits. In only 3 minutes, the deep rod doubled over! We put about a 15lb king mackerel in the boat. I came back around for another pass, and BOOM! The other deep rod doubled over. It was a beautiful mahi mahi. As Rick was getting the baits ready to send down again, he got a bite right off the rod tip from the planar. He wired it up… it was a small black fin tuna. After the small flurry, we trolled to the north towards a large anchored ship out in the deep. There seemed to be a lot of activity around. There were 2 large frigate birds, aka “man-o-war birds.” I pointed them out to the fellas and explained how they feed. I thought it was gonna be on! I made several passes, but all we caught were a few small baby bonitos. We put them in the well to keep them alive.

I turned back around and trolled back to the south towards one of our local deep ship wrecks. We cleared the lines and I set up on the wreck. We had great current and excellent conditions. Rick deployed the live bonito down to the bottom and we drifted over the wreck… but to no avail. We tried one more pass but still no result… nobody was home. We continued our way on the troll, catching one more black fin tuna. I came back inshore on the reef and we caught 2 more king mackerel. We ended our trip with about 9 fish. The guys all had a great time out on the water. I’m really looking forward to watching the game on Friday night! I took some great shots of the gang, and we wish them luck!

Capt. Stu and the Crew of the Miss Bonita II