Tuesday am we made the call to fish the weather window for Wednesday. Hodges Rash replied to our invite texts and said he will be on a plane from Pit that afternoon at 5:10. Rounded up the four horseman, Chad Plot, Chris Skipper, Hodges Rash and myself and started our morning at 6:17 from IOP marina. Rolled outta Dewees chowing down on $2 freshly made Waffle House bacon, egg and cheese biscuits, listening to Bob Marley only making 24-27 kts, due to the 4-5 footers. At 8 am deployed the eight lines, two teasers and dredge, and picked up a dolphin off the bat in 290 feet, 80.5 degree blended water with flyers and scattered weeds. The area looked real fishy, and by 9, I exclaimed, “That fish hit the short rigger pretty hard!” - I grabbed the rod and then she jumped while we all yelled, “Marlin!!”. Chad turned the boat hard towards the fish while Chris and Hodges cleared the spread as she tailwalked and peeled line of the 30 Alutecnos. I fought her off the starboard side as Chad chased her to keep the line from spooling. After 45 min of Chad’s incredible boat maneuvering, Chris reached out and leadered her boatside. Worked the area for another few hours while downing ice cold margaritas then pushed out to 700 feet to find an awesome 1.5 degree break and defined edge/color change/weedline. Shocked to only pick up a couple of dolphin - but one was a nice 35 pound bull. Cranked up the generator as Chad came out of the gourmet galley with hot, smoked barbeque sandwiches topped with coleslaw - went down well with our cold Bud Selects. Made it back to the ledge and deployed the wahoo spread. Generator fired up again, and Chad pops out of the gourmet galley with warm, homemade chocolate fudge cake and vanilla ice cream,- what?!! Picked up lines and made it to Dewees at 33 kts in one hour twenty minutes. Another awesome day away from e-mails, cell phones and headaches!
Capt. Mel
