This column originally appeared in the Keys Citizen on Dec. 2, 2012.
Most of my fishing pictures are beautiful to look at. The sun is shining; the ocean paints a wonderful blue-sparkling background. My fishing buddy, or fishing buddies, are smiling and standing at the rail with bent rods in our hands and florescent lit-up denizens of the deep are splashing and skyrocketing in the background like gymnastic Christmas-time sugarplum fairies dancing in our heads. And this is how it goes with almost every photo and every fishing buddy; except for members of the “Rough water is OK with me” club.
My oldest and most experienced fishing buddy is Bill Dalessandro from Orlando. “Captain Bill” as most of us call him when we’re happy with him, and “The Old Fart” when we’re not so happy with him, is the guy who actually taught me how to catch fish on the troll. Which, as most of you know, is the way I fish 99 and 44/100% of the time. Captain Bill taught me how to rig ballyhoo on beaded chains and how to tie Bimini twists.
But, almost every photograph of me fishing with Captain Bill has mountainous seas and frothy whitecaps in the background. We’ve never gotten hurt or wound up in an emergency situation, but we have stayed out fishing longer and in rougher weather than almost all of my other fishing partners. Inexperienced boaters and fisherpersons are more prone to getting into trouble in rough waters and I don’t recommend this type of fishing for everybody. And, I don’t fish like this with everybody.
I will stop fishing and return to port when fishing with people who are uncomfortable in rough water as soon as the water becomes rough. This sounds simple enough but it is sometimes very easy to become overconfident or unaware of your guests’ abilities. I have found that uncomfortable, or outright scared, people make mistakes and get hurt way too often, so I avoid it. But, I digress; as usual.
I have another friend who is an extremely capable boater, an accomplished recreational fisherperson and willing to push the envelope a little bit when stalking the elusive finned-ones. He and I had the opportunity to fish this week. With the weather forecast calling for increasing wind and seas for the remainder of the week and the entire weekend we decided to go while we had the chance.
Dan Connell and his lovely wife, Mary Ann, have homes in Marathon and Wisconsin. He and I became friends over a fishing conversation several years ago and remain friends now. Dan owns a 21-foot Sea Ray Laguna with a Honda four-stroke motor. One of the really cool features of this boat is the tower station built on his tee-top. Although there is no steering control on the tower, it is invaluable for finding fish, and a real treat to have on a smaller boat. Dan had just returned home from snow-birding, taken the boat out of storage and prepared for his first offshore fishing trip when he called and twisted my arm to take a break from work and “wet a line.”
Forty-five minutes later, we pulled away from his dock with the intentions of running out to 140-feet of water, which we expected would be relatively calm and catch a few of the gaffer-sized mahi mahi that have been stacked up there lately. Things were perfectly aligned with our plan as we ran through the bay, through Vaca Cut and out to Hawk Channel. It was when we approached the reef that things began to go awry; and it was when we passed the reef and entered the Gulf Stream that we realized the weather forecast we had relied on was less than accurate.
By the time we had a four-line trolling spread out we were in pretty consistent four to six-foot whitecaps. In the distance, against the horizon, we spotted frigate birds cart wheeling near the ocean surface. “Let’s get out there,” we said to each other. Even though the wind was coming from behind us, trolling speed was as fast as we could comfortably move. The seas picked up the further out we went. We spotted a commercial charter boat rapidly approaching the flock of birds we were heading for. Dan moved the throttle up, and almost immediately we had to slow back down. The seas were too big to make any faster headway.
You know, the way you measure a wave is from the bottom of the trough between two waves to the top of the next wave. An easy way for small boaters to determine the size of a wave is this; if you have to look up while standing in the boat to see the top of the next wave – the wave is big. There you have it. We were in big waves; some more than six feet high.
The charter boat got to the flock of birds about 100 yards ahead of us. We kept on course and the next thing we knew, the deep-trolled line started screeching and a flat line went off right behind it. Two big mahis broke the surface and danced behind the boat. After fighting the fish, and fighting to stay on our feet, we gaffed them and brought them aboard. Within an hour we caught a total of four. One broke off and we boated the others.
Gaffing and boating big fish in nasty seas is difficult and sometimes dangerous. More than once, big waves surprised us as we concentrated on reeling in fish. Dan and I were catapulted into each other after being bounced off the gunwales only to separate and continue fighting fish. We could not let go of the T-top frame long enough to pass in front of, or in back of, each other and wound up passing the fishing rods back and forth instead. This is not quite IGFA rules, but it did fill the fish box and keep us both in the boat.
We turned the boat around and headed back to shore. We trolled a couple of likely looking spots on the way back, but no luck. At the dock, we washed the boat down, cleaned and filleted the fish. Mission accomplished. We beat the windy weather (kind of) and we had plenty of fresh fish. Life doesn’t get much better than this.
Dan is now a permanent member of the “rough water is OK with me” club. And no matter how big the waves get, life is good in the Florida Keys; life is very good in the Florida Keys.
C.J. Geotis is a life-long fisherman who followed his dream more than 20 years ago to live in the Florida Keys. His books, “Florida Keys Fish Stories,” and “Double-Edged Sword” are available at Amazon.com. He lives in Marathon with his wife, Loretta, and her Coca-Cola collection. His email is fishstoriescj@comcast.net.