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Today my fishing buddies were Ken Hittman, Jay Smith, Tim
Majoras and Michael Thompson who are all chefs that work for Disney over
in Orlando. Today they are taking a day off out of the hot kitchen to
enjoy the beautiful weather, a calm ocean and its rich bounty. All I can
say is that these guys are a fun bunch of guys and it's obvious that
they really enjoy getting out together.
We started our day as usual getting some pogies down at PAFB,
and I'll tell you the bait gods worked me over today. I was able to
catch plenty of small pogies but not the size needed for effective slow
trolling. I tossed the net many more times than is usually necessary and
finally hit the mother load of optimum sized ones. We ended up throwing
back many more than our live well could hold.
Off to 8A we went and it wasn't five minutes until Jay iced a
small Mahi and it was game on. The bite was slow but steady and I think
that next time I should probably use hooks with barbs, just kidding,
because it seemed that our catch rate was less than 50 per cent of what
bent the rods there for a while. We finally got it dialed in and were
able to catch another nice gaffer Mahi and seven kingfish.
We decided to go after some cobia rather than stay and slow
troll the pogies so we made a run inshore to do a little sight fishing
for the last hour or so. In less than an hour we saw one free swimmer
and a four Manta Rays. The free swimmer who was obviously a keeper
wouldn't eat a live bait so we moved on. We saw on two of the four Manta
Rays and managed one hook up on a keeper Cobia but the hook came unglued
about ten minutes into the fight. Too bad he got off cause I'll bet they
could have turned him into something mouth-watering. The guys really got
a chance to taste the excitement of the Cobia chase and we saw a lot in
the short time we had to pursue them.
We cruised back to the house at 30+ knots with a lot of good
memories and a mess of fish for these guys to work their magic on in the
kitchen. Another great day and and some new friendships made on the Goin
Off. Final tally for day two:
7 Kingfish between 10 and 22 pounds
2 Mahi between 3 and 12 pounds |
