Friday 27th April

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.