Hot off the press - Harry the Rat was feeling very gloomy this morning. He had just heard that he'd sold ONE of his Ferrari's back in the UK. Luckily his brand spanking new £250K one will be ready soon, so we presume that he'll cheer up a bit then !!.

OK, back to the main agenda. The weather today was brilliant, not a cloud in the sky and 84 degrees with only a light wind.

Today we were with Captain Manny on another Grouper with teammates Keith and Geoff.  Our other two boats were with Captain Damon and Captain Birds Eye Bill.

Captain "Birds Eye" Bill

"Billy No Mates" Harry the scab was with his only two friends and opted for a bit of everything, but ended the day having battled with a few sharks and not much else. It seems that even TWO Ferrari's doesn't guarantee that you'll actually catch any fish.

Robin's team decided for some unknown reason to go and catch some Amberjack. I'm never totally sure why people are willing to pay serious money to go offshore and have serious pain inflicted upon them. Any how Robin & Co retired hurt but unbeaten and they'll be back tomorrow after  a session with the team physio tonight.

Geoff, Keith, Captain Manny and Roy

The crew aboard Another Grouper had opted for some Sailfish fishing first thing then Permit fishing later in the day. First job was to catch bait and our team effort soon gave us 100 threadfin herrings in the bait well.

We quickly motored out and over the reef and started our first drift in 130 ft of water in an area where the Vandenberg, a 520 ft military transport ship and missile tracking vessel  was sunk last year as part of the Key West artificial reef.

This 13-year project to create a new artificial reef in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary finally ended May 27, 2009, with the intentional sinking of the former missile-tracking ship the Gen. Hoyt S. Vandenberg. The 523-foot-long ship is situated about seven miles south of Key West. The bottom of the ship’s hull rests on sand at depths between 140 and 150 feet. But the ship is so massive that the superstructure extends to about 45 feet below the surface. Even though the process to acquire, fund, permit, rid the Vandenberg of potential environmental contaminants and tow her to Key West took 13 years, only a minute and fifty four seconds were needed to sink her after a demolition team ignited forty four explosives’ cutting charges.

Second drop with a free lined threadfin and I had a take, the mandatory count to five and wham, a Sail Fish headed off to Cuba.  Chief Purser Keith made no mistake with the leader and we released our first sail of the trip. Minutes later Geoff was also into his first ever sail fish, plenty of good coaching was available and soon Chief Purser Keith skilfully released Sail number two. It was only 10 o’clock and already we were having a great day.

It was a little slow for the next two hours with only a nice bonito to show falling to Keith’s rod.

We still had plan "B" and as you know any plan is better than no plan, so we raced off to our secret Permit patch that few other white men know about. Within minutes we were hooking some magnificent Permit with several triple hook ups.

Geoff got out the fly rod and caught three on small crab patterns.

Permit are often fishd for on the shallow flats with the fly rod but it's unusual to catch them in 50 ft of water...Well Done Geoff !!

The previous night Geoff was telling us how hard salmon fought, now he agrees with Keith and myself that compared to Permit they are like playing skimmer bream.

The Permit fishing was awesome and brutal, what made it especially good was the fact that the Gulf stream had moved close inshore and was now flowing over the Permit Patch. We could clearly see the bottom in 50 feet of water and watch the fish take our free lined crabs.

Keith and I both said that it had been several years since we had seen so many Permit.

Keith didn't look too happy when he didn't catch a Sailfish but the bottom lip has perked up now that the Permit are biting.

We had a last cast with our last crabs and called it a day. We started with 20 crabs and had a fish on almost everyone, plus Geoff’s three on the fly.

What a day, unbelievable.

Tomorrow is another day, the weather forecast is good and hopefully we are going out to the shrimp boats in the Gulf.

Watch this space.