I arrived home late last night after an awesome week of fun in the Florida sun! The first thing I will tell you is that I did not catch a snook. The second thing I will tell you is that after all the other fish I was catching I really didn't care!
Most of my fishing was done on a drift boat called the
Black Dog out of Jupiter Inlet. And, as almost
always happens, I made another New Jersey connection. Captain Bill Taylor is a New Jersey native who has been living down in Florida full-time since 1995. Bill is a self-professed striper nut and, as a youngster, used to work as a mate on the Doris Mae out of Barnegat Light. Pretty cool!
My first day out Mate Andrew rigged us up with hi-lo rigs and we proceeded to catch a variety of bottom dwellers. Several types of snapper were swung over the rail as well as triggerfish and porgy. Then one of the anglers hooked into something big which kept him busy for quite awhile as the rest of us watched him do battle. Eventually, the huge sea creature was brought to the surface. It turned out to be a nurse shark, which looked to be around nine feet long! After getting some pics, the leader was cut close to the hook and the big fish was free to swim off.
As the morning bite faded Captain Bill moved us around a bit to find some better action. As many of you that know me understand, I am not very patient when it comes to soaking bait for any length of time (especially if the bites are few and far between). So I grabbed my little spinning reel, tied on a bucktail and sent it on down. I was quickly rewarded with a hard bite. All I could do for the first couple of seconds was hold on as the fish peeled line off the reel. Then, as I started to pump it towards the boat the line went slack. First I thought I had lost it. Then I thought it might be swimming hard at me. Neither was the case. As you can see in the pic below, something much bigger decided to make a meal out of my catch. A shark severed it in half, just behind the head! The fish I had hooked into was a bar jack. Not worth much for table fare anyway according to the Captain.
A few drops later I was into another hard running fish. The drag screamed as line melted off my little 4000-size reel at an amazing rate. I thought it was going to spool me as the reel starting smoking! I did manage to gain line back however. Eventually I landed this tremendous fighter, which turned out to be a crevalle jack. Again, I was told this one is not a good eater as well. So after a couple of quick pics, back in the water it went.
The rest of the morning got a bit more interesting as some anglers managed to hook into some king mackerel. (More on those later) At the end of the trip most of us were hooked up with some nice sized false albacore, up to about 12 lbs. The folks down there call them bonito. But they are the same fat alberts/little tunny we catch up here in the early fall. Definitely a lot of fun on the light tackle!
My second day out with the Black Dog crew, although the bottom fishing bite was better, I asked Mate Chad to rig me up for a shot at some king mackerel (a.k.a. kingfish). These are not the little bottom feeding, whiskered kingfish we catch up here. These are lean, mean, drag singing, toothy speedsters!
Chad rigged me up with a sardine on a flat line and I drifted it back into clear blue water. In just a few seconds I had a taker. I quickly threw the reel in gear and set the hook on my first king! As it made its first hard run I instinctively thumbed the spooled to slow him down. This earned me a quick reprimand from the Captain who told me to let her run. After a few minutes my first kingfish was gaffed and in the box!
My last day out, I knew I wasn't going to be playing around with those bottom fish. So I started out with my trusty jig and hooked into a kingfish almost immediately. From then on we had king mackerel (up to 30 lbs.) all day long. What a blast! There were times when we had four and five on at a time! That certainly made things interesting as we perfected our over/under moves around the boat.
My three trips out with Captain Bill and the Black Dog crew were great! Captain Bill did not only work hard to put everyone on fish, but he and his mates, Andrew, Chad and Adrian did an awesome job helping everyone out, giving tips to the newbies (me), and making all feel very much at home. Anytime I pulled my hooks out of the water, one of them was there to throw a fresh piece of bait on, retie, or do whatever was necessary to get my line back in the water as quickly as possible. I would definitely recommend them if you're planning a trip down to the Palm Beach area of Florida.
Other than my trips on the Black Dog, I did a little fishing on the Juno Pier and the Boynton inlet. I have nothing really to report from either location. The only thing I saw caught were some grunts and a puffer fish. I also had a chance to attend the re-opening celebration of a new pier in Lake Worth, which was a lot of fun. The old pier had been destroyed by a hurricane back around 2005. The new one is very nice and it was jam-packed that day with anglers from end to end. There were also reporters from the local TV news on hand to cover the event. Although the fishing was not really happening there either, I did get to see someone catch a pretty hefty permit while I was there.
Did a little freshwater fishing too. The last pic is a bass I caught on a Senko using my daughter's new Hannah Montana fishing rod.
Definitely a great trip and a lot of fun!
Pic 1: Jupiter Lighthouse
Pic 2: nurse shark
Pic 3: nurse shark
Pic 4: shark eaten bar jack
Pic 5: crevalle jack
Pic 6: triggerfish on a bucktail
