I was fortunate enough to grow up here in the Charleston area and spend some time fishing our offshore waters growing up. I have always said it did not matter how many times you went out on the deep blue ocean, you would always see something that amazed you. I have not been offshore in several years, due to a back injury and my lack of confidence in being able to make the ride and come back in one piece, but my son’s desire to get out there finally outweighed my own trepidation and I knew I needed to get him out sooner than later.
My brother, Tim, texted me this past Wednesday and asked if my son and I would like to go and I knew the time was right. I told my son I would wake him at 3:45 and when I went into his room at 3:50 he popped right up and told me I was late. I remember those days well, hardly able to sleep with excitement, so I knew exactly what he was feeling.
As we pulled back the throttles in 130’ of water I was a little disappointed that we were not really seeing much life on the ocean. No weeds, no birds and very few flying fish around. My hopes were dashed a little more when one of the guys fishing with us, who shall remain nameless so he will not be blacklisted by all of our fishing friends, broke out a banana for breakfast.
The early part of the day went very slow. We ran to the ledge and began to troll in a southeasterly direction toward an area that has been productive for some friends the day before. Not long after we get the spread out, the starboard rigger gets hit and immediately goes slack. We drop… drop…, but nothing happens. We reel up only to find the hook has been straightened at a really strange angle. After a little more trolling we get a dolphin in the spread. He was swimming around back there, not really hitting any of the baits, so we dropped the short line back to him and we were hooked up. My son’s first dolphin came to the boat and was a slinger and as were slinging him into the boat he came unhooked bounced off of the gunnel of the boat and