We had some engine work done on the MAR-T, so I had the whole fourth of July weekend to get in some fishing time with a few of my friends that I don’t get to see because I am always out on the charter boat.
Thursday July 3rd I went out with Ken Sigler, (one of my college room mates), his sister Kim Sampson (also a college room mate) and Ken’s daughter Kelsey. We took Ken’s 20 foot Wellcraft Step-V. The plan was to hit a quick limit of red snapper and see if we could get into a few king mackeral before it got to hot to tolerate.
I had found a spot fairly close in a couple of weeks ago I wanted to verify was as good as I thought and we were putting our four man limit in the boat in short order. We had five of eight red snapper and one king in the boat when a group of young men in a little orange boat decided they wanted to ride around with us in Ken’s boat for a while. The two Coast guardsmen that boarded us were very cordial. Kelsey on the other had was having a bout of the salt water virus while they were there, so she was a bit mortified, what being a very pretty fifteen year old young lady.
Ken had flares, which were in date, but they had gotten wet. He also had two horns, but, both had pin holes rusted in the cans and were inoperable. The CG fella in charge of the boarding must have been having some sympathy pains for Kelsey, he wrote Ken a warning and said we could catch our last few fish and head in. All around extremely kewl of him I thought.
We knocked our limit out on the next drop and added another king to the box then slow trolled back to Ken’s paw in law’s house. Kelsey got pics and is supposed to email them to me tonight.
Friday July 4th
The admiral and I went to Sand Island, (ok, ok, Pelican Island) and enjoyed some time with friends and extended family for most of the day. I had planned to hit a snapper spot or two before we came in, but, I left my fishing license on Ken’s boat from the previous day. I just didn’t feel like pressing my luck, so we headed in.
Saturday July 5th
My good friend Jerry Whisenhunt and his family are down from Oklahoma for their annual stay at their Desoto Landing summer home. We have not gone fishing on his 31’ Cape Horn the last two summers due to me running the charter boat. His parents Georgia and Bo are in and he wanted them to get to have some chances to get on a good snapper bite. He convinced me to leave the dock at 5:30 am. I assured him it would not take but one stop to limit on red snapper, but he seemed pretty set on the idea, so I relented.
The water was pleasantly calm, but, there was a pretty decent little thunder storm just south of my intended destination. We dropped and the fish bit extremely well. Georgia and Bo caught on to the circle hooks a lot quicker than Dustin, Jerry’s 16 year old nephew. Alex, aka Fish Monkey, Jerry’s 11 year old daughter is quite the little fisher person herself, but, grandma and grand daddy were schooling her as well. Our six man limit came before 7 o’clock had gotten well under way.
The steady lightening and scattered rain prompted me to run the boat to the north east to do some trolling around near shore rigs. We put down two deep diving lipped plugs and two silver eels on top. About lap number three around the rig a king skied on the port silver eel. There was a 20ish foot sea hunt boat very near by and it looked as if the king was going to jump clear across their lines. Grandma and Grandpa Whisenhunt had never gotten to see anything like that but they both witnessed the king’s acrobatics and were quite taken with how high and far the fish jumped. Dustin got the rod and we were able to get in the big smoker in the box. A couple of more laps around the rig did not produce any more so we pointed the big Cape Horn back to the south as it looked like the skies were clearing in that direction and Jerry wanted to get his guests on some amber jacks. The further south we went the greyer the skies turned and the rain drops started falling again. I pulled up a number close to where we were to try for some triggerfish. Grandma Whisenhunt and Dustin got the bite figured out and in no time we had a nice mess of triggerfish piling into the boat. On the other side of the boat, Grandpa Bo started putting the hurt on the beeliners. The drift line got hammered by a king and Fish Monkey took the honors of battling that one to the boat. I was really pleased that my “pets” were treating the Whisenhunt clan so well. I’d gotten the boat back on the numbers and a few more beeliners and a triggerfish or two had come aboard along with a king on a chunk of squid, hey, it happens, when a boat was approaching at a heading I didn’t like. I had everyone reel in and motored well away from the spot to let the boat go on its merry way.
Fish Monkey was dangling her two hook triggerfish rig in the water along side of the boat while we were playing the waiting game. She said, “Hey , some fish is trying to eat my squid….IT’S A LING”!!!!! I said, “Girl, are you sure it isn’t a remora”. She said, “IT’S A LING, AND HE’S BBBBIIIGGGGG”!!!!!! I still wasn’t sold. She didn’t even have on polarized glasses. I didn’t see anything through my Costas, but her dad flipped out a curly tailed jig and said it got hit but dropped. He brought it back in and tipped it with a squid and the squid got pulled off on the next cast. Heck I couldn’t argue with that, so I tossed the drift line bait, a silver eel rigged for king out behind the boat. One millisecond later I was hooked up solid with a pretty decent ling. KEWL!!!! I don’t EVER get to catch fish anymore, or at least it seems that way. So I hopped up on the top of the transom live well to fight the fish around the rods reels and people in the boat. The fish made a pretty close pass by the boat and sure enough, it was a keeper ling. Then I saw the fish that Fish Monkey most have seen the first time. To be honest, I thought a porpoise had just swam under the boat. I told Jerry to get the other king line baited with a silver eel and toss it out because my ling had brought a friend with it. Dustin attempted to toss the bait out behind the boat, but, the Penn 7500 was a bit bigger than the rigs they use for cat fishing in Oklahoma. The precarious cast landed about six inches from the port gunnel. He began to lift the bait out of the water for another cast. Simultaneously me and Jerry shouted, “STOP”!!!! The fish accompanying mine came out from under the boat and slurped down the ribbon fish. Now we had two ling on. “WWWWOOOOOOHHHHHOOOOOOO”!!!!
I managed to get my fish into gaff range and Jerry put the steel to it and added him to the fish box. Now Dustin had the run of the boat to land his BIG fish. I had gotten a good look at the fish he was hooked to and guessed that it might go 60 pounds and we had all day to land it. The young man took direction well and after thirty or so minutes the fish was making a pass close enough to the boat that I took a gaff shot at him. Metal met fish and fish met fish box. Oh yeah, the line broke somewhere between the fish being lifted in and the lid to the big fish box in the floor of the Cape Horn being opened. I just had a feeling I needed to gaff that fish first chance I had.
Well, I kinda figured we’d had such a successful day there was no use in heading any farther out. We had a six person limit of red snapper, a nice smattering of triggerfish, a nicer smattering of beeliners, three kings and two ling, one being an extremely nice specimen. I asked the crew if they felt the same way and they agreed. We got the boat squared away to make the ride back in and I checked the GPS for the time of day: 11:42 am. Yeah, I think I am glad Jerry talked me into heading out early.
Here is the crew and some of the captives from our trip:
That’s Jerry on the left, Grandpa Bo holding the ling I caught, Dustin and yours truly holding his first ling, and the cute and talented Alex “Fish Monkey” on the right. Gandma Georgia was the photographer.
Here’s Dustin with his ling at the scales at Dauphin Island Marina.
The fish was really long, but not very fat. She weighed in at 49.25 pounds, still not to shabby for a fella’s first ling.
Sunday July 6th
Well, unbeknownst to me, the mechanic had come and done some work on the MAR-T before the 4th. Oh well, what’s a fella to do? I had a great time getting to fish with some friends and extended family that I usually do not get to see since I seem to always be wrapped up with running the charter boat. I invited Jerry and any of his folks visiting out on the MAR-T for a shake down trip to make sure that it was indeed running up to snuff.
We left out of Dauphin Island Marina shortly after 11:00 am. We had Jerry Whisenhunt, his daughter Alex aka “Fish Monkey”, another daughter Autumn, his nephew Dustin, his niece Caitlyn and his mom Georgia and father Bo. I looked at the radar online before heading out and noted there were some big thunder storms well north of the coast, but figured they wouldn’t get down our way until evening.
I picked out a handful of spots to try for some red snapper fairly close in. I wanted to make sure the boat was acting right while running AND fishing, since it is a fishing type boat and what not.
The first spot I marked structure but nothing marked in the way of fish, so I headed further south. The second spot had completely disappeared, or my GPS has taken to telling me fibs. I reluctantly left there and stopped on a spot I am sure would mark, the Tulsa, just to make sure I wasn’t experiencing a GPS issue. Well, the Tulsa was about 200 feet north of where it was back in May when I last visited, so I guess my GPS has been through to many 4’ drop tests. Anyway, we did drop some baits down and were rewarded with two pretty decent red snapper. I caught some chatter on the radio between the Escape and the Deliverance and it had to do with impending bad weather. Like I stated earlier in the day, the radar looked like we may get some storms maybe by evening, but, according to Skipper on the Escape, the weather radio was really going on about how bad things were going to be by mid afternoon. Hhhm, not good. So I broke the bad news to everyone that we’d have to head on in since a line of bad weather was a few hours away.
So we’re tooling along headed to the barn and I am trying to run over spots on my chart plotter just to see how they mark up. I headed a bit to the east to run over one of my ”check it” spots. Man did the bottom machine light up. Soooo, I spun us around and told everyone to get ready for a couple of quick drops. Grandpa Bo had been fishing with a snapper slapper lure and he got hit right away. Well, lo and behold he joined the cobia club as Jerry measured out a nice little 33 ½” ling. He dropped again and caught a nice snapper. Well, long story short, he hooked three more snapper there and let Caitlyn fight the last to the boat which was a solid 6 pounder. I heard Skipper and Capt. Jonathon Dunham from the Deliverance talking on the radio about the weather again and Skipper, who runs a 65’ boat said he was heading for shore. He has 29’ more boat than I have so I put a halt to the fishing and continued heading for the light house as well.
We were about 2 miles from the light house when we met the squall line. I went from 14 knots to 9 knots. I have pop up windows across the front of the MAR-T. Two were shut due to the spray we were taking but the one in front of me got blown shut, which I have never seen happen. The wind was blowing hard enough that it was lifting the bow of the 36 foot Topaz. By the time I got to the light house, every wave we hit threw so much spray it was like someone was spraying the windshield with a fire hose. I dropped it back to 6 knots and still could hardly see out of the windshield. There was not much rain in it, but the wind was impressive. (I checked the historical data on the weather station on DI at the time we were coming in and it has the winds at somewhere between 3 and 5 knots…ok, right. Granted, it also has the gusts at 99.9 and the gust direction as 999, so maybe their anemometer is broken).
By the time we got to Billy Goat Hole, it had pretty much blown on south. We were back at the dock around 3:30. I think the total tally on the shake down run was 5 red snapper and a keeper ling. The fish were biting really well, but, the weather made the decision for us to come on in. The boat ran good with a few more little gremlins to work out, so I’ll likely be absent for most of the rest of snapper season with all of my “spare” time being spent on the Mar-T.
Thursday July 3rd through Sunday July 6th out of Dauphin Island 
