So I’m vacationing in a tropical location that I can’t tell you the name of, however I will share with you my ocean fishing experience so far, it’s been all in all a blast!!! We were visiting a friend’s house, his name is Jim, and he has a sweet 22 foot speed boat, they’re actually called “bay boats” but they’re just really big speed boats which as you can imagine go really really fast.
First morning we’re visiting we head out to the dock, it is late morning however so the good fishing time has past. So out we go, Jim is pretty insane so he goes as fast as the boat will allow, needless to say it goes so fast that once he slows down near a bridge you can barely feel your face and your eardrums are kind of stunned so everyone has to be yelling for you to hear them. We stayed out 5 hours and never got a single bite! It majorly sucked, but the boat was pretty intense.
Next morning we decide to get out there early enough to catch some fish, so we wake up at 5:00 in the morning. It’s still dark when we leave the dock however we could still see where we were going sort of, the GPS was helpful. We started off getting a few bait fish in the shallow water, so we could cast them out and catch the big ones. After about 45 minutes of that, I caught a few myself actually, the weather took a turn for the worst. Jim wanted to head out to a reef about 12 miles off shore, meaning half an hour or so of a straight “run” was necessary to get out that distance. Jim gunned the engines and we were hitting it at 28 mph or so, but we were going straight into waves so the boat was making HUGE jumps, it was fun as heck but a little scary. But life isn’t fair so it starts raining hard. If you’ve never experienced this I’ll break it down for you: Going 25 or so mph on a boat with no windshield straight into a tropical downpour HURTS. The massive droplets sting like a paintball gun. Not to mention once we get a few miles out the entire sky is a storm besides a little spot just ahead of us.
Once we finally reached the reaf (indicated by a yellow buoy), lightning begins striking from two different directions, we’re in the middle of a clear spot so we’re in no immediate danger however it is scary. We can barely see the city from that far out but we start to troll around. Trolling is when you move slowly in one direction why the lures are behind you. If you use lures that look like fish then trolling makes a lure look like a small fish that is just swimming along ready to be eaten. After the first hour there is nothing except a few times where our lines caught some seaweed.
Then it happened, the jackpot. One line went buzzing like mad so Jim cut the engine. My brother is older so he got the first one. After about six minutes of hard fighting we pulled into the boat a nice tuna, he was 8 pounds and about two feet long, very good for that certain species of tuna. Next minute I got to reel in another tuna roughly the same size, I did reel it in much faster though because I’m pretty dang strong. After about 4 more tuna, an amberjack and about 10 maccaral (I can’t spell that) we were having fun, all except for me. Turns out to reel in a fish the boat must be stopped, which is when sea sickness is easiest to catch. It doesn’t help either that the weather can’t be much worse and the waves are huge. So there I am ready to puke my guts out while everyone is having a blast, I hate being vulnerable to motion sickness.
Then all of a sudden one line goes absolutely nuts. Jim knows it’s big so he reels in a shark!!! It was about 3 feet long which is very small, but it was still pretty sweet, they swim a certain way that makes them look really cool (when you’re in a boat, not in the water with them). Then another line goes off and Taylor reels in a massive King Fish that is four feet long and 24 effing pounds, it was crazy huge!!! After that we called it quits and went back to the dock. Once the boat was in motion again I felt better, but I’ve had random headaches ever since.