The Shipmates were up bright and early and it looked a promising day, but how wrong can you be.

Catching bait was the problem and our usual Threadfin Herrings had done a vanishing trick.

They had got progressively harder to locate over the last few days.

However both teams battled on but it turned out to be hard work.

A last resort is often the Amberjacks; if they weren’t so easy to catch you would consider them to be a brilliant fish.

They can be big and really pull hard, often in deep water over wrecks sometimes it’s all you can catch.

For most anglers 1 is enough 2 are painful and more than that is serious back pain.

Pulling them up from 200ft of water is serious hard work.

Over the years we have seen many a strong man beaten by AJ’S.

Cruncher Morley with another AJ

Not to be deterred both teams made the most of a very hard day and boated several.

It is not uncommon for the shipmates to do a round trip of 100 miles in a day and to do that you need some serious horsepower.

This is not one of our boats but 4 x 300 horsepower is pretty awesome, so is the fuel bill at just over ½ gallon per mile.

Serious Horse Power !!

The marine patrol has the same engines on a much faster boat that will exceed 60 miles per hour; you can’t outrun one of those.

Our boats have much more sensible engines and this is Cool Water captained by Chris Garcia running at a mere 40 miles per hour

Coolwater is one of the boats that we regularly use

On checking through our pictures we found one that we are sure was planted.

Mischievous Keith looks like he is about to do something very naughty, cant imagine what.

What's going on here then ??

Its only tough shipmates that can stand the pace, Keith looks tough, or is he in pain?

Playing big fish without a butt pad can lead to some nasty bruising in tender places

You will notice that Robber always wears a butt pad; you supposed to get wiser as you get older.

Robber Marlow always has a butt pad at the ready

A tough day for everyone, but that's fishing.

Both teams off to early beds, tomorrows another day and some cunning plans are in the offing.

The weather forecast is for no wind so it could be an exciting adventure.