Today my fishing buddies were three fellows from New Jersey; Marty, John and James aboard the Goin Off and another three guys from New York; Ron Mike and Meli fishing aboard the "Fired Up" with Capt. Chris Cameron.  All of them were visiting Orlando attending a conference and it was Chris that booked our little braggin' rights tournament. We all met up at Bluepoints marina at 7:00 AM, loaded up the soft drinks and beer and  off to the fishing grounds at 8A we went.
    The weather when we departed was just beautiful with clear skies, light wind and calm seas. Little did we know that before the end of the day we were going to finish our day of fishing with and adventure going through the "perfect storm".
    We both started our day as usual getting a net full of pogies obtained right across the ship channel in the port in the cruise terminal basin. Chris an I had both decided that since 8A had been pretty productive in recent days that it would be there where we would start our day of fishing. The bite was slow but steady and both boats were able to catch  a nice mess of kingfish and we were rewarded on the Goin Off with a bonus, keeper Cobia.
    Around 3:00 PM we noticed a few thunderheads brewing well inland over Orlando so I fired up the radar and took a look and what seemed to be a typical afternoon thunder pumper we are so accustomed to dealing with here in east central Florida. Unfortunately, it wasn't until I took a look again at 3:30 PM and then listened to NOAA weather radio that we were dealing with an unusually fast moving, severe storm and by then we had it was too late to get to the port before the storm hit.
    This wasn't my first rodeo when it comes to afternoon thunderstorms, but lets just say that this one had all the ingredients to turn a really fun day of fishing into a serious situation. The "Goin Off" and the "Fired Up" are tough, very seaworthy vessels and although we can't do anything about the lightening, they are perfectly capable of handling the wind, seas, rain and hail this storm threw at us. The storm hit about nine miles out of the port and later that evening I did a little research and found that the data buoys recorded winds in excess of 60 knots and seas that went from nearly flat calm to four feet plus with a four second wave period. We also had quarter sized hail for about ten minutes as we punched our way in.
   Apart from the excitement of the extreme weather in the last half our advdnture and the ocean that looked like something out of the "Deadliest Catch" we had a great time caught a bunch of fish and have some memories that wil last a lifetime.

Final tally for both boats for the day:
4 Mahi-Mahi to twenty pounds
6 Kingfish
1 Cobia about 25 pounds