[taylor]

Hanging out with my buddies for some couple of cold beers Friday night the nightmare came true, cell rings and the charter group for Saturday morning cancelled their trip at a time when I could book 3 more charter boats a day if i had them.
The decision was done within a few minutes; we'll take the boat for our own fishing trip.
After slipping $20. - to the man in charge at the local Marine's station we cleared reef 7:00AM sharp, regular time to run out would be 8:30AM.
Sea still flat, no waves, no winds, the beautiful conditions we have since two weeks now, I moved 20 minutes offshore to bring all the local lobster traps behind us, so a 5-6nmls out I left the fly bridge at the hands of Gerhard, a friend from Austria, it was his first day in Blue Water, to rig some baits and get the lines wet. My second buddy Ralf, a German guy is an experienced salty, he operated his own charter boat at the north coast a couple of years ago. 5 lines wet for the first 90 minutes we saw absolutely nothing, no weed lines, no currents, nothing floating, very poor baitfish activities on the surface. to hell with it, beer cooler was full, a lovely sunny day, no norgeling clients to take care of, we went outwards to cover the area 12-15nmls offshore, changing baits to ballyhoo combos to stand the higher speed, trolling on a 10-12 knots. Close to 11:30 I saw the shadow coming besides the center line's ballyhoo, my lucky rod i always keep with me on the bridge, the bastard took his first piece and then came back for the rest of his lunch, a few seconds later the hook been set and we saw the beautiful jumps of an 50lbs Atlantic Sail, my two buddies shared the 25 minutes stand up fight on a 30lbs line, Ralf introducing Gerhard in the stuff i call the best men can get. i tossed the tired but unharmed sail a maybe 2-3 minutes with us in the water beside the boat until he seemed to calm down, and away I let him go to meet again on an other sunny day with maybe a few more pounds to fight. Still no white Marlin hit in the middle of season on perfect conditions fishing my favorite dark side of the moon. Ralf starts getting lines wet and i start a trolling on a regular 8-10 knots pointing inward, because the regular crew had to run a charter on that boat, my 40ft Sea ray named Alta mar, at 1:30PM that afternoon. Second and last hit that morning we got in the shallow water right shortly before hitting the passage to cross the reef inwards while bringing in the lines, a Barracuda hooked himself on the line Gerhard was bringing in that moment, he had acceptable 25 lbs for being caught so close in front of the beach.
So at all not the big deal for a saturday morning, but at the end my newbie buddy got his first big fight of his life, and it was not something, it was a Sailfish, this time of the year unaccepted in our local waters, and by the way he can say he set his first hook right, even when the Barracuda did it himself.
Good luck to all

Thanks
taylor