Thursday 26th April

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 !!