A funny old day. The weather forecast spoke of 15 mph winds but when we got to the boats it was flat calm with hardly a breath of wind. All of the skippers had decided to make the long journey to fish some of the many wrecks in the Gulf of Mexico. Chris on Coolwater had already motored 30 miles when he heard a weather forecast talking of strong winds behind a cold front that was moving quickly towards the Keys. We could see the front ahead of us and Chris decided to abandon the original plan and to turn back. When he radioed this news to the other skippers Jack also did a smart about turn whereas Damon preferred to believe his own eyes and carried on to his original destination.

We were joined today by an old friend of Tommy & Keith, Brian Gent another former member of the Terrapins match team famous just before the last war . He fished with Tommy aboard Damon's boat but sadly, their determination to reach their original destination of Kingfish Hole didn't really bear fruit. They caught a couple of permit and a few little snappers, a poor reward for such a long journey.

Keith and Jim were joined by Ali MacLeod and his young lady Sheryl from the Isle of Man aboard Captain Jack's boat. They started by turning back from their intended destination and fishing a couple of small wrecks in the Marquesas Islands. They caught a selection of snappers and then moved to the harbour entrance where Ali caught his first tarpon and a grouper and a few more snappers were also brought aboard.

Roy and I fished on Chris's boat and we were joined by Radomir and Vladimir who were doing some filming for a promotional DVD for ABU fishing tackle dealers. After aborting the trip to the far off wreck in the Gulf, we motored around trying a few shallow wrecks with absolutely zero results. We then decided to go shark fishing near the Marquesas Islands. Things started well, with Roy catching a acouple of small sharks and then the tide died and the sharks disappeared. There were some small fish swimming around at the back of the boat and Chris, the skipper, put a tiny bait on and caught an African Pompano. He then did a piece to camera explaining that this species had been almost wiped out by the nets and that only now were they slowly returning to local waters. He then happened to glance into the water and saw a big fish swimming near the bottom. Without a second thought, he stuck a damn great hook into the rare, almost extinct fish, lowered it to the bottom and passed me the rod. Within seconds the pompano was eaten by a Goliath Grouper (formerly called a Jewfish in an age before political correctness) . After a tense and exhausting battle the monster was auled aboard the boat. Having no world class weightlifters on the boat, the motley crew had a pathetic attempt at lifting it for the camera before giving up and returning it to it's watery home. The cameramen were ecstatic with the fish and I began thinking in terms of huge royalties to be paid over to the lucky angler (me) !!. No such luck but it's still the biggest fish of the trip and an awesome sight.