April 19th - World Sailfish Championship Day Two

Plan "B" for our intrepid team involved getting up at 5am, leaving the dock at 5:45 and motoring half way back to Miami to an area that most of the Sailfish were caught in yesterday. They sat next to the winner, in fact they fished all around the other boat. Sadly the other boat landed 6 sailfish to win day 2 whereas Team Gulp caught a variety of toothy critters such as Kingfish and Baracuda but not a single Sailfish !!. Tomorrow is a rest day before the final day on Saturday and current plans involve catching some fresh bait (them and the other 129 boats in the tournament) followed by a much needed practise session. With the winning team on each day picking up around $80,000, there's still everything to play for.

Today Mick went out with Dave on Jack Kelly's Windy Day. Mick was hoping to do battle with a Goliath Grouper but Jack decided that they'd go shark fishing. Jack's a bit like that, you decide what you'd like to do then he does exactly what he wants. I'm not sure that anybody has dared to explain to him that the people who keep giving him hundreds of dollars every day are called customers, and they're supposed to be right sometimes. The group tried various spots but the total count from a full days fishing was exactly one shark. In truth, it was a very quiet day all round, with the ships radios being full of skippers moaning about how bad the fishing was. It seems that a westerly wind is a bad wind in this part of the world, totally opposite to what we find in the UK.

Tommy, Jim and I were on Chris Garcia's boat again. For once we did manaqge to catch some bait and then motored offshore to try for Sailfish, Tuna etc. It was really slow fishing with just the occasional Bonito being caught to break the monotony. Bonito look like miniature Tuna and they always put up a great fight for their size. Tommy then hooked a fish that definitely wasn't a tuna. It set off on a long fast run then fought an incredibly dogged battle for around 45 minutes. By that time we'd guessed that it was almost certainly a shark, and it turned out to be a Lemon Shark weighing between 250 and 300 lbs, a great fish. After a few more drifts and another Bonito or two we decided to move over to the Permit patch where we'd seen the Hammerhead Shark yesterday. Incredibly there was a boat moored near the spot and it had 2 people snorkelling from it. I guarantee you that if they'd seen that shark yesterday they'd not have swum within ten miles of that spot. As it turned out the sun had gone behind a huge patch of clouds and it was impossible to find the shoal of permit. We poodled around for about a half hour but with no sign if where the Permit were hiding, we gave it best and moved to the wreck of a light aircraft that is laying in about 200 ft of water. From that wreck each of us caught a Mutton Snapper (brilliant eating), and a good end to an average day.

Here's Tommy's Lemon Shark

and here are a couple of the Mutton Snappers

More news tomorrow.