It's HOT, and peace has returned to our little band of brothers. The last of our days in paradise was one of the best for weather, with a gentle 10 mph breeze and bright sunshine.

Everybody was taking it easy with all three boats starting in the harbour after Tarpon.

I was fishing with Roy on Damon's boat. I was hoping that with the decent forecast we'd go offshore to bottom fish for Grouper etc but Damon decided that he'd been so beaten up by a week's fishing in heavy seas that he needed a rest. After a couple of hours trying (and failing) to catch a Tarpon, we motored out to the permit patch at Western. The Permit were thick on the ground and it was a case of motoring around until you found the shoal, then casting a crab into the middle of it and holding on tight because these fish really fight. We had 21 crabs to use as bait, we lost 3 off the hook and each of the others hooked a fish. One of Roy's permit was eaten by the resident Hammerhead Shark. He appeared out of nowhere and was suddenly alongside the boat, so close that you could touch him. Nobody had a camera to hand at the exact moment, so we've got memories but no pictures...bummer !. Here's a picture of Capt Damon with the Permit that he caught on his only cast of the day

And here's a picture of a camera shy member of the team holding a Permit. 32 pictures were taken on his camera today and amazingly he appears in 22 of them !. We've hidden his identity so that people can guess just who it might be

Mick fished with Keith on Captain Jack's boat and they stayed in the harbour to catch 5 Tarpon including one caught by Keith on 12 lb line, a spinning rod and 20 lb leader. The Tarpon weighed around 70 lbs, so no mean feat to land that fish on such light tackle.

Tommy, Dave and Jim fished with Capt. Chris. Tommy is known as Tommy Tarpon with good reason. Today he landed one out of five but the one that he landed was around 130 lbs and took one and a half hours to get it to the boat. The battle has made him proper poorly and he's been having a lie down for the last couple of hours. Here's a Tarpon about to be unhooked

And Finally..... here's a picture of a Key Deer. They're the smallest white tailed deer and are an endangered species now found only on Big Pine Key. We saw this fellow on our way down to Key West from Miami two weeks ago.

Sunny in the low 80's with slightly less wind.

Ross & Roy fished with Capt. Jack in the harbour for Tarpon. It looked like we were in for a great day when Roy hooked the first fish after about 15 minutes. We were fishing in an area known as the sailboats - for good reason

Trying to play fish of around 100 lbs in amongst all of those anchors is not a lot of fun, the fish often run under several anchor ropes and you have to lean out of the boat and pass the rod under the anchor rope or chain. Roy's fish was safely leadered and photographed and about 15 minutes later we had a double header with two Tarpon going in opposite directions. The problem was solved by Roy's hook breaking neatly in half...more later. Mine was eventually brought to the boat and it was one of the larger ones caught this week

A move to a different part of the harbour and we were back in business. Roy had a fish of around 70 lbs and then I hooked another decent sized one. After playing it for around 30 minutes we nearly had it to the boat when that hook broke also. It says on the packet that "The combined development of Gamakatsu and Daiwa has created hooks with an unbeatable strength to wire ratio" - I don't know which of these fine upstanding companies is actually responsible for the product but thanks Guys, this particular hook is a heap of shite, here's the evidence.

No more fish were hooked, but we had an encounter with a very strange boat. It's apparently a high speed vessel leased by the US navy and it has a variety of uses including search and rescue and testing of new systems. It's an amazing looking machine and seems to be visiting Key West for a day or two. Anyhow, here's one awesome looking boat

Keith's day had started badly when whilst trying to clean the inside of the fridge (left dirty by members of the party who aren't totally house-trained) , the glass shelf hurled itself to the floor and shattered into a million pieces. He then joined Tommy and Harry to fish offshore with Capt. Damon. They started by fishing for Amberjacks. Tommy caught one first cast and Harry also caught a nice one

Keith had a huge selection of jigs that he thought would be the perfect fish catcher, but try as he might he couldn't get a fish to bite one. His woes continued when Harry tried to throw an amberjack into the fish box and it hit Keith on the ankle, causing a nasty swelling and doing nothing to lift an increasingly black mood from our leader.

They then moved onto the Permit patch where everyone (except Keith) caught a Permit or two. Tommy also caught the rarest fish of the trip, an African Pompano. I don't know who looks more surprised, Tommy or the fish

It seems that I'm the latest villain. Keith wanted everybody to go downstairs to do a film session with Radimir, the Serbian cameraman. Having no wish to be a film star in the Balkan states (unlike some others of the party), I've stayed upstairs to write this stuff and incurred the wrath of our beloved leader, like I said he's having a bad day and everybody else is being made to pay - oh well !!.

Dave, Jim and Mick were out with Capt Chris. They chose shark fishing rather than Yellowtail fishing but sport was fairly slow. Dave managed a 150 lb Bull Shark and also earned the distinction of being the first person ever to break one of our Tarpon rods. Mick and Jim caught a few Black Tip Sharks and a Nurse Shark of around 100 lbs but once the tide turned at around lunch time it was the end of their day's sport. Here's Dave's Bull Shark

So, one more day left. Let's hope that we can all wake up in a better frame of mind and actually be polite to each other, in the meantime I suspect that tonights meal might be quite a sombre affair, C'est La Vie !!

Same old hot sunny weather, same old 20 mph wind !

Just in case you're wondering about the title of the site, Gulp is a totally biodegradeable natural bait. We've not really had the right opportunities to use it much although we've been using it successfully whilst Yellowtail fishing. Anyhow, today Roy managed to catch a photo worth fish for us to post on the site, complete with Gulp baited hook hanging from its mouth.  Here's the proof that Gulp really does catch fish (it's a Porgy in case you're interested)

Ross, Keith and Harry were out with Chris. Not a totally successful day. The plan was to catch a Baracuda, then use that to catch some sharks and finish off the day with a couple of hours Tarpon fishing in the harbour. We couldn't find any Baracuda, we caught a few smallish sharks on Baracuda out of the ice box and then we didn't have a bite from the Tarpon. Almost sounds like a day fishing in the UK rather than a day in paradise but we had a great day with lots of jokes told and fishing stories recounted.To be honest it was a rest day after the last few days of being bounced around the ocean whilst fishing for Yellowtails etc. Tomorrow Roy is going to teach me how to Tarpon fish like the experts, so that should be fun although with only two days of the trip left I'm not sure that I want to spend one of them in the harbou. The problem with Tarpon fishing is that you have to hold the rod the whole time and you have to concentrate hard the whole time. That's fine provided that there's a few fish biting otherwise it's soul destroying.

Tommy and Dave fished with Manny and started the day by going offshore looking for Sailfish. They didn't catch any sails but they did catch a couple of Dolphin Fish (no, not Flipper or his mates). Here's Tom holding one of the Dolphins

They then moved to the Permit Patch and caught 3 Permit out of a total of 5 hooked, that's pretty good going because these hard fighting fish are experts at cutting your line on the rocks that they swim around. Once more the HUGE Hammerhead shark put in an appearance, this time just as the Skipper leaned overboard to tail a Permit. That shark is one scary creature. Here's dave with one of the Permit

Don't ask me why they're wearing fancy dress. Either they did it for a bet else it's just old timers disease catching up with them.

Today was Graham's last day, so he went out with his Number One Employee and mentor Roy. It was Roy's intention to inflict more pain on poor Graham by hooking a few more hard fighting monsters. Things didn't work out quite as planned because it seemed that every time they hooked a decent fish it was promptly eaten by toothy critters like Shark and Baracuda, in fact at one time it was nine nil to the fish. Roy salvaged the day by catching a Black Grouper of around 30 lb (that's nice), a monster Amberjack and a very photogenic Barjack. First the Grouper

And now the photogenic Barjack complete with the unphotogenic Mr Marlow (that's nice)

Graham had a frustrating day losing eleven nil, a similar scoreline to that achieved by his football team, Everton.

Same old story, winds of 20 mph+ and temperatures in the low eighties.

Dave and Harry were "yellowtailed out" so they decided to go Tarpon fishing with Captain Jack. Dave was soon into a big fish that turned out to be a nice Baracuda

Tarpon fishing was still slow but our pair managed to catch 4 Tarpon including one "huge" one for Harry. Here's a small Tarpon caught by Dave (don't panic, the gaff is under the bony chin of the Tarpon and it was returned completely unharmed)

Graham (you remember him, he's Roy's boss) was out with Tommy & Ross. Now Roy had made it very clear that there are two golden rules whilst on these trips. The first is to always check your drag, the second is never to forget the sun screen. Well Graham forgot one of those - I wonder which one ?

The agenda was much the same as yesterday, Yellowtails, Yellowtails and more Yellowtails. Graham caught enough halves to make a few whole fish from the body parts and one or two Grouper were hooked and lost in their holes in the reef.

Keith, Mick and Radomir (the camerman) also fished for Yellowtails. The sea wasn't quite as rough and Radomir did managed to survive another day out on the ocean. They also managed to catch 4 grouper and a couple of Mutton Snappers.

Tomorrow we're planning to go shark fishing so check in for news tomorrow.

Monday was again sunny but windy. Today we had three boats between eight anglers.

Harry, Tom and Dave fished with Damon. It's Harry's dream to catch a Tarpon, Permit and Sailfish all on the same day so they had an early start and left at 7 a.m. There seems to have been a misunderstanding between Harry and the Skipper because Damon motored straight out to the Yellowtail mark that we'd fished yesterday. As in fishing the world over,today was a different day. The tide was hardly moving and the Yellowtails had completely disappeared. They tried another spot with no joy and finally ended up fishing beside Mick, Roy and Ross on board Chris's boat where they were soon into some Yellow Tail sport. Harry hooked a monster of the deep but lost it after a short fight. They ended the day with nothing worthy of a photo so I'll show you a couple of regular Key West inhabitants. There used to be hundreds of pelicans in Key West but the hurricanes of a couple of years back decimated the population. They're slowly returning and are very quick to congregate around the fish cleaning tables when the boats get back in the afternoon.

Roy, Mick and Myself were with Chris today. With winds over 20 mph the choices were limited to Tarpon fishing in the harbour or enduring the bumpy ride out to the reef to fish for Yellowtails again. Tarpon fishing hasn't really turned on yet so we settled for the reef. We had with us a photographer, Radomir Krkic from Serbia. He travels all over the world making fishing films for Serbian television and is currently negotiating further coverage throughout the Balkan countries. Things started well enough during the one and a quarter hour run out to the mark and Radomir was soon filming the capture of some Yellowtails and a couple of Black Grouper. However, after about an hour he turned a most peculiar colour and decided to have a sit down, followed by a lie down followed by quite a long spell of death. It was a real relief to see him come back to life once it was time to come home. We had another great day catching lots of Yellowtails and four Black Grouper. Fishing like that makes the long, bumpy journey worthwhile. Here's Roy and Mick with the Black Groupers

Keith and Jim fished with Captain Jack in the harbour, targeting Tarpon. They caught a couple of Tarpon and to everyones surprise they also caught a Permit each. It's very unusual for Permit to be caught in the harbour, so to catch 2 in a day was quite a feat. Jim's fish was one of the biggest that anybody had seen, an amazing capture by somebody on their first trip to Key West.