Practice

Capt. Dallas will love this one. When business is slow, what do you do? Practice! David called and said he would like to help his neighbor become a better offshore fisherman and wanted me to run the boat. Being a good neighbor myself, I donated the time. Another "AWESOME" offshore adventure here in the keys was in the making. Lots of bay grass and green water out to 650'. For those with their own boat, that's 11-12 miles offshore. The first birds we fished in the blue water brought us a nice baracuda (for our friend Omar at Porkys restaurant). Next stop was some schoolie dolphin. The warmer water was beyond the wall (1000 ft.) and it was full of football size tuna. We saw a large billfish greyhounding on the outside of a school of waterbreaking tuna and ran it down. It passed on all our expensive baits and came to the flat line and ate a pink C&D unrigged lure. Chopped David's head off in the phone camera photo, but the quality of picture is getting better. We left 1300' and got a "skippie" tuna for the neighbors wife. Every mile was a new set of birds and school after school of small tuna. Now it was time for a trophy dolphin. Run and gun style. 2 birds instead of 20 or 30 was the key to finding a feeding dolphin. With our irresistible spread, hooking it up was almost certain. Getting it in the boat is what fishing is all about. The first jump let me know it was over 20 pounds and of coarse the more it jumped the bigger it got. At 100 yards, a 25 pound fish looks like a 45 pounder and we were VERY excited. I still get "buck fever" when a big fish gets on. David is shown w/dolphin.

Hopefully his neighbor learned something; his angling and seamanship skills had a lot to be desired. He was kind enough to give me a break from the helm while he proceed to try to break my back (and his boat) with a pounding that I thought only novices trying to show how fast and stupid they could run a boat. He did not appreciate my comments and I was in so much pain that I really did not care. If anyone wants to show what a pounding their boat will take, do it by yourself and let others watch from the beach.

Captain Pips knows well enough that even a sore back cannot ruin an offshore adventure here in the keys.