Today my fishing buddies were visiting Central Florida from Orleans, Ontario Canada and decided while they were here visiting the theme parks they would take a day to go deep sea fishing for a half day for the first time. The rest of the family decided to opt out of fishing and visit the famous Ron Jon's and spend the day at the beach while we were on the deep blue sea trying our luck. We delayed our normal departure time until 9:00 AM to let the ladies get a couple of additional hours of beauty sleep, and, who wants to get to the beach to soak up a little sun at 7:00 AM anyway.
    We left my home here in Cocoa Beach at 9:00 AM and made the journey to Canaveral Locks and were able to see porpoises and manatees in the wild as is normally the case. We made it to the mouth of the port by 10:00 AM and started our run down the beach in search of live bait. I was stunned to see that overnight the water temperature in the surf had plummeted to 68.9 degrees and the pogies that were plentiful only one day before were virtually non-existent. Uh-Oh :(  The wheels just came off of plan "A" and having been there before I always take enough dead bait to make the move to plan "B" if there is no live bait available.
    We proceeded on to 8A reef where the kingfish had been plentiful for the previous three days and experience told me that we should be able to score on the kings with the spinning minnows (Spanish sardines) as well. Double Uh-Oh :( Uh-Oh :(. Again, overnight the water temperature had gone down to 69 degrees at 8A and the water quality had turned into that sick green color and full of algae that gives us king fishermen bad dreams at night. It only took an hour and one very small remora to convince me that a major change in strategy had to take place very quickly to salvage our day.
    Now I was up to plan "D or E". I consulted with my crew and told them that we wouldn't be able to get it done unless we made a dramatic change in plan. I asked them if they minded turning the half day into three quarters to allow us enough time to run the additional 12 to 15 nm offshore to go searching for a few Mahi-Mahi. This strategy was the only thing I could come up with quickly that would still get them on some memorable fish and send them back to Orlando with enough quality fish for the fish fry they were counting on.
    All I can say is thank you Lord for all of your blessings and a special thanks to King Poseidon for putting us into three 15 to 18 pound gaffers in just a little less than 1 1/2 hours of drowning ballyhoo.
    When we started back for the Port at 4:00 PM we were in 238' of water 34 NM northeast of the port and and I was able to get them them back to my dock and on their way back to Orlando by 6:30 PM with 4 gallon bags of filleted and boned Mahi for dinner.

Final tally for the day:
3 Gaffer Mahi Mahi
1 Remora