Florida 2017

As it’s nearly my big 50, Dawny took us to Islamorada for a week’s fishing, and what a week it was, we had 5 days fishing split into 5 morning and 5 evening trips, we were a little concerned as Irma had just wrecked the keys, Assured it would be okay we jetted out of Heathrow with just a little trepidation.

 The guide was a Guy called Dave Plummer, a guide with many years’ experience,  a short hour and a half drive from Miami and we were  at the digs, boy was there some debris on the side of the roads, but thankfully we soon found some great beers, there has been an explosion of micro brewery’s in Florida, so we were set.

After a day’s rest we were ready for the first mornings fishing, after a few throws of the cast net in the canals we had plenty of 9inch mullet as bait, yep we were using 9inch live baits, all of the fishing was based around the bridges as they act as a high way for the fish to get in and out of the channels. The first who rods were set, two live baits were allowed to swim under a locator float. one bait was about 50 yards from the boat when all hell broke lose all these, a Tarpon around 125 lbs attacked the bait from underneath, literally leaping 5 foot into the air, something that was to happen many times, After a short spell I noticed a very big dorsal fin behind the boat, it turned out to be a hammerhead shark 10-12 ft long which followed the bait to within 15 ft of the boat, it was an amazing sight, needless to say the Tarpon scattered. We did hook a big nurse shark about 40 kilos, boy did it fight I a strong tide.

 At this point your probably expecting a breakdown of the action day by day, well here’s the breakdown, every day was full of arm wrenching Tarpon, Jack crevalle, sharks of all description, nurse sharks, bulls sharks, spinner sharks, black tips, it was furious, one of the Tarpon we hooked dragged us 1 mile under the bridge and out the other side, we hooked Bull sharks that towed the boat around for an hour, crazy fishing, the sharks we so big we had a 25 kilo Jack Crevalle bitten in half on the retrieve, one memorable moment was when Dawn hooked and landed her first Jack a great fish about 20 kilos. The fish were so big that when we lifted the smaller fish out of the water the skipper had to drag me back into the boat or vice versa, now it’s a dangerous thing to lift fish from the water big big bull sharks have been known to hit fish at the side of the boat.

 The wild life was great we had Manattees in the canal my the digs, one afternoon we were fishing when an Ospray swooped down an grabbed our live mullet, as the bait was only lip hooked the hook pulled out and the huge bird got a free meal, an amazing site.

By the end of the week my arms were aching, my back was aching, we has 5 days of amazing sport, all fish we released to fight another day, amazing amazing sport.