700 lb. Thresher caught on the Out of the Blue

[captandy]

Interesting fishing this past week. But first lets go back to last week. Last Friday Night Open Boat Swordfish trip, we went 3 for 4 sowrdfish. It was one of our better night out there for swordfish since we started doing the trip. We caught a 55" forklength swordfish, a nice fat 57" forklength swordfish and another one that was too short to keep. We also missed another nice fish, but we didn't have him on for very long. This most recent Friday night open boat swordfish trip was not so good. We got completely skunked that night. First time since we've been doing the trip that we didn't even get a bite. Lousy night, the wind was wrong, current was bad, everythign was bad. Anyway, hopefully we'll do better this week and next.

Sharks are still biting really good. Hammerheads are here in really good numbers this year. We've caught more hammerhead sharks this year than in many years prior, and its only the beginning of the season for 'em. Silky sharks too are here in record numbers for us.

One really awesome trip we had this week was on the Out of the Blue. We were shark fishing and the fishing was slow. It was 3PM in the afternoon and we had been sitting there since 1PM. Nobody was paying any attention when the deep bait got ate. Rod tweeked over and started pulling drag. We strapped the customer in the chair and started the fight. About 2 hours into the fight, the guy fighting the fish said he couldn't do it anymore. We put angler #2 in the chair. He lasted about an hour and gave up. We switched anglers again and again and again. At first everyone was all gung-ho about staying out there to fight this fish. At about 10PM everyone started to wear down. Everyone was exhasted and tired and we still hadn't even gotten to see the fish. I thought it was a giant sting ray or something weird like that. Anyway, we pushed the drag up to 50 lbs. of drag and said, "let's make him or break him." When the fish took a tiny amount of line, the reel would squeek. I thought for sure we were gonna lose him. Finally at about 11 o'clock at night we get the leader up. We could hardly see down in the water to see the fish. It was about a 700 lb big eye thresher shark. The fish was over 15 feet long, and the fattest one we've ever caught. The fish had to be 4 foot wide NOT counting the pec fins. We got a guestimation of the measurements and turned him loose. A brutal 8 hour fight and a HUGE seamonster. I'm sure the fish was as sore the next day as we all were after catching him. He put up a brutal fight and all I can say is that I feel bad for the next guy that catches him.

Another cool trip was with Jim Harvey who caught a triple header sailfish on his trip. There were a couple days when the sailfish really snapped which made up for a few really slow days we had just before.

This week, since the wind picked up to monsoon strength, the dolphin started biting like mad. There were a lot of big mahi mahi caught with this big blow. On the Mary B III we went out the other day with only 13 people. it was a light crowd on the boat and the drift bite has been slow, so we went trolling instead of drifting. We went out offshore a bit and Capt. Adam spotted a whale shark swimming. Right behind the whale shark was a huge school of schoolie dolphins. We caught a crapload of them and missed a ton. They were all little ones but keepers. Later that same trip we caught 2 really nice dolphin, one about 18 lbs and the other 27 lbs. It was a weird week for us with the strange weather and everything but the fishing has been red hot. I haven't even had time to go fish my shipwrecks and poke around on the bottom this week at all. I know what I'll be doing next week . See ya all out on the water, the fishing is good.

[tales]

Went to your website. I sure hope that there's not many other charter captains with the "keep everything you catch " attitude that you apparently have. No wonder I see very few Barracudas anymore when diving. From the looks of your website we'd be lucky to see any type of shark either. You should be embarrassed to post these pictures on such a forum as this.

[captandy]

Most of the pictures you see are anywhere from recent to 15 years old. Nowadays we release ALL sailfish we catch. We only bring them in if they are bleeding profusely or if they are tailhooked and drowned. As far as sharks, barracudas and other gamefish, we release about 90% of the ones we catch and anything we do bring in gets used entirely. I'm not a tree hugger zealot, but I am conservationist minded and we don't kill everything we catch. We've changed a lot of our policies towards fish harvesting and we only bring in the fish we have a use for.

[orange crush]

What's this tales problem. I don't see anything wrong with your webpage Capt. Andy. No, each fish is not hooked up a personal aquarium and released alive....the charter wants to eat their share I would think. If you take some photos before that I don't see grounds for his negative remarks. Billfish are released yes, and most sharks and amberjacks probably too. People wanna see results a lot of the time if their going to shell out their hard earned dollars, an the webpages facilitate that end. Just a young guy trying to make a livin'. Woopty do. Go pick on the diver who shot the blue marlin for no real reason...IMHO.

[tales]

I'm no tree hugger by any means, but a little discretion should've been used for the pictures on your web. You get a "snowbird " checking your site and he may immediately start getting the wrong ideas. Show sailfish releases - not pics from the dock. Triggerfish is much better table fare than shark.

All I'm saying is there's a problem when it's easier to catch Kings today than Cudas. We're quickly losing that balance that's needed on the reef. Twenty-five years ago I would see Cudas pretty much anywhere diving off Broward. Not today.

I'm all in favor of seeing a Capt. making a living taking people fishing, but as South Floridians we all need to do our part to not overfish ANY specie.

[LHPfish]

They hang dead fish at the dock because it attracts tourists, business is business they are paying customers