April 20th - Pleasure Fishing

Friday dawned bright and breezy. It was a rest day for the tournament, so everybody took the opportunity to have a day's pleasure fishing. Here's the news from each of the boats :

Tommy, Mick and Dave were out with Manny. We now appreciate why travel insurance becomes expensive after age 65. The second one of our party, Tommy Young, fell overboard luckily into only about 2 and a half feet of water whilst trying to refloat their grounded boat. They had a great mixed day catching Cobia, Amberjacks, Permit, Bonito Snappers etc. Whilst fishing for Permit or friendly Hammerhead shark put in another guest appearance, he's obviously got the taste for Permit.

Roy was out with Graham Thomas, the boss of Pure Fishing in the UK. Graham had been promising to come out to Key West for a few years now and Roy was determined to make him suffer some pain. They were out with Chris and Roy had decided that they would catch some Amberjacks, simply one of the hardest fighting fish in the ocean. A major incident took place whilst they were fishing for Pinfish for bait. A cormorant was hanging around and it promptly ate one of the little fish on Roy's line. It then twisted and turned until it had wrapped itself in the other hooks. Roy (licensed cormorant killer) then pulled the bird into the boat and gently unravelled the poor thing. Turning to Graham he told him that Cormorants have quite a nasty bite, then waved the bird at him where it promptly attached itself to Graham's arm and wouldn't let go. It drew blood before Roy could get it to let go, probably because Roy was laying in the bottom of the boat peeing himself laughing. Anyhow, here's the proof, Roy Marlow about to release a cormorant alive

Roy has worked for Pure Fishing for several years and during that time he has kept notes every time Seaman Thomas his M.D was nasty to him. Today was payback time. Graham had an idea that he was going to suffer, so he had been secretly going to the gym three times aweek to try and get a little fitter. Unfortunatly for him there were no Amberjacks at his gym and the ones south of key West in 220 feet of water did not give a dam about his training. It was not too long before he was on his knees crying, broken back, tired arms, burnt fingers and cursing Roy. Roy questioned why every fish when it pulled was called '' Jesus'', followed by sounds of severe pain. There was a time when Roy was almost in tears with laughter, even Captain Chris felt sorry for Graham and commented that even slaves were not treated that badly. It was non stop action, loads of Amberjacks, some great Mutton Snappers and a magnificent Red Snapper. An awesome day in Paradise. Graham passed the test for the first day and Roy cleared the page from the nasty book.

Here's the Red Snapper

And one of several VERY BIG amberjack

Harry and Keith fished for tournament bait in the morning then fished for Permit in the afternoon. Keith agrees that the Hammerhead is around 12 ft long, it swam under their boat twice.

Here's one of Keith's Permit about to be stolen by a member of the Mujahadin

Believe it or not, Harry (a hard nosed business owner) has been sobbing and moaning all night because his picture hasn't appeared on the web site. Rather than watch a grown man cry (even more than we've suffered so far) here's a picture of 'Arry with a Permit that he caught today.

Finally, I was out with "Flipper" Jim on Pat's boat. We had a really nice day catching a variety of species and losing some real whoppers on rocks on the bottom. Here's  Jim with another Amberjack