Bottom Bumping With Basho

Red napper season, during which Hammerhead was subjected to a half dozen bottom fishing trips with a dozen different anglers, closed yesterday, July 18. It is tempting to write a Fishing Report on each trip, or at least to write a summary mentioning each trip and every angler, but I am mindful of Pat Dineen's observation that I do run on. So, I am going to distill the entire season into a single photograph of my wife and one fish she caught, with a haiku as a caption

In pools of summer shade
waitng red snapper
hear smiles unborn above.

Emerald Coast Billfish Classic

The Emerald Coast Billfish Classic, which is fished out of Baytown Marina in Sandestin and is one of the premier tournaments in the northern Gulf,, began today with a shotgun start at 4 PM Central in East Pass at Destin. Boats with fish to weigh have to be under the Mid-Bay Bridge no later than 9 PM Saturday night. Given the weather and the prevalence of green water in a hundred nautical mile arc from Destin, most of the boats - and they are big, fine boats - will be headed to the southwest, a loooong way to the southwest. Hammerhead is in the slip with her hanging in shame, as I plan to join the Girly Men Gang and go snapper fishing this weekend.

But East Pass Marina is well represented among the 71 entrants by Bella Maria with Wayne Lewis at the helm and Outta Here under the command of Pat Dineen. Below are photos of our intrepid warriors and the vessels that, hopefully, will bear them to glory and to the bank with their prize money.

Wayne Lewis (behind Maria Falduto) and his crew

Bella Maria moments before departure

Pat Dineen (on the bridge) and his crew

Outta Here under way

The start

Stay tuned.

It Could Be Worse

Hammerhead left Saturday night once again in pursuit of blue water and pelagic predators. On board were your correspondent, Eric Songer, and Ron King. Just as we were leaving the slip, Outta Here was pulling in from an overnight trip flying a blue marlin flag and a white marlin flag. I did not know where they had gone (south of the Ram Powell over in oil rig country) in relation to where we were going (south of the Squiggles in Nowheresville), but their success filled us with a lot of hope and not a little competitive spirit, differences in boat size and crew experience notwithstanding. You can almost see our Great Expectations in this photograph taken by Pete Mitchell from Wayne Lewis' balcony as Hammerhead headed into the Gulf through East Pass.




We wallowed out for ten hours in a nasty 2 to 4 foot beam sea (all the 2s apparently stayed home, leaving the field to the 3s and 4s) looking for the northern edge of a pocket of blue water Roffs showed 65 nm to the south. By the too long delayed dawn of Father's Day, Hammerhead's generator was on the fritz, so there would be no coffee, no AC in the salon and no fans on deck. And most of the hope and all of the competitive spirit had been beaten out of us during the night. But we pushed on to the south looking for the blue water. 75 nm. Nope. 80 nm. Nada. We turned to the north west, dragging our wares in blue-green water that quickly shed the blue and stayed green.


But we found grass. Acres and acres of scattered grass, so much and so scattered it could not be fished. And we found big grass mats that could be fished. And lines of grass, good lines with clean edges that should have held beaucoup mahi, if nothing else. But they didn't hold anything except a smattering of chicken dolphin, a school of hard tails now and again, and infrequent flying fish. We trolled lures. And ballyhoo. We pulled up and tossed jigs. And plugs.


Bupkis. Eight and a half hours of fishing and only one knock down. Not one fish. Skunked for the second time this season, a record of the most dismal sort. If you doubt me, below is a photo of the three of us taken by Mary back at the dock. I am on the right.


But things can always be worse. Seriously. Below are two photos taken from an oil rig crew boat Friday afternoon as it closed in on the source of suspicious smoke seen rising over the horizon 45 nm south of Venice, Louisiana. In the background of the first photo is a flybridge sport fisherman burning to the waterline. In the foreground are four men in life jackets clinging to an ice cooler. The second photo is a closer look at the last moments of the boat, which belonged to the father of one the men. (Nice Father's Day present his son gave him, although I guess his son returning alive and uninjured might have taken a bit of the edge off the pain of losing his boat. But probably not.)

To top things off, the fishermen reported in an email to friends announcing the loss of the boat and their rescue that they too had failed to find blue water or catch a single fish and were on their way home with a skunk in the boat when disaster struck. So I'm thinking we on Hammerhead didn't do too bad after all.

Uncharacteristic Brevity

I have fallen behind on my fishing reports. I am going to catch up with a new minimalist approach - less prose and more pictures. But I promise - or threaten, depending on your point of view - to return to my usual prolix propensities in the future.

A few weeks back, Hammerhead went out with Papa, Tenser Malette and Ron King aboard, and got skunked. Yes, skunked. That same day, the Bella Maria brought home 10 mahi and 4 wahoo and had three blue marlin bites, including a double, one of which they released. And Final Dose and Anonymous came in from bottom fishing loaded to the hatches with meat. Plus, the next day Outta Here returned from afar with three yellowfin tuna around 50 pounds each and an 87 pound wahoo. Did I mention that we were skunked? Needless to say, I was disappointed.


For the next couple of weeks the wind blew and I sulked, joining the ranks of bottom fishermen, which brought joy to my women folk, who seldom get to fish on Hammerhead
.
Miss Mary, aka Grandma, opening up a can of whup ass on a big snapper.

Heather, Freemanator and their haul.

Rested and undaunted, Hammerhead reentered the fray this past weekend, heading out Saturday night with Papa, Tenser Mallette, Nicholas Mallette, and Chris Coker aboard, looking for blue water and billfish. And we found them. During the day, we had four marlin - two blues and two whites - in the spread, and one of them, a 300 to 350 pound blue found a hook, making Tenser a Marlin Man for the first time.

Papa chirping in Tenser's ear, leaving no hortatory bromide unspoken.

Mano a mano with The Man.

Victory at sea.

Propitiating the Marlin Gods.

And we put three mahi in the box to complement the rum when we arrived home.

Uh, Was That A Marlin?

Every foray by Hammerhead, or by the Hammerheads in another boat, does not result in a story about fish caught. But every trip is nonetheless an adventure, and some new lesson is almost always learned.

As you know, the Hammerheads' motto is, "If it ain't blowin', we're goin'." The principle is simple enough, but the question is what exactly constitutes blowin'? The obvious answer is wind that produces waves such that people who truly love to fish would prefer to be on the dock rather than on the boat. But this in turn depends on the individual, the boat, and the trip.

There is no bright dividing line here. Wayne Lewis on the Bella Maria, a 52 Viking, has brought home sea weed on his outriggers, picked up when he dipped an outrigger into the back of a wave while wallowing in a heavy beam sea. Pete Mitchell of the Anonymous, a 54 Hatteras, says, "If it's 4, stay on shore.", and he means it. Outta Here, a 65 Viking on C dock, and Just Teasing, a 60 Hatteras on B dock, crush waves that shiver the timbers of Hammerhead. And it's one thing to slog 8 nm out from Stuart on a 53 Bertram in 6 to 8 foot rollers to sailfish, as the Hammerheads did December before last, and another to slam into a 4 foot chop on a 35 foot Cabo for the 90 nm from Destin to the Double Nipple.

Which brings me back to this past weekend. The forecast was for wind 10 to 15 knots out of the south , seas 2 to 4 feet. And this had been the forecast for four or five days, meaning rollers with some wind blown chop on top. But the Pensacola weather buoy, 115 nm to the southeast was reporting waves of only 2 feet. But this type of report is the average of the highest 1/3 of measured waves, meaning that every third wave could be twice the reported height. But... But ...


No buts; I decided to give'er a go. Hammerhead departed around 7 pm Friday with yours truly, Eric Songer, and a friend of his, Mike Esser, aboard, bound for a reported hard color break 85 nm to the SSW.

Things started swimmingly as we pushed into 2 foot swells at 7 knots. We divided the watches into 2 1/2 hours each beginning at 2100. I went first. Eric relieved me at 2330, just as the moon was rising. The wind had picked up, and the sea was getting lumpier, but nothing to write home to mama about. As I slept that half sleep captains sleep when underway at night, I was from time to time conscious of a shudder when Hammerhead slammed into a particularly large wave or of a bang when she fell off a big one into the trough.

At 0130, Eric woke me up. "You better come on deck," he said. Mike was already there. "It's pretty snotty," Eric said, " and it's been getting worse ever since I came on watch." He was right. The seas were not 2 to 4, they were 4, then 4, and 4 again, right on our nose, and three to five seconds apart. Hammerhead was laboring. I slowed to 5.5 knots. Better, but not good. We were 35 nm from our intended destination, still north of the Spur and 50 nm from the house. To give you a feel for the conditions, below is a photo we took of a nearby boat. Alright, maybe not, but it is what I would have expected to see if there had been a nearby boat and if I had been able to see it, but then I am a tad melodramatic.


There were three choices. Push on, take the beating, and hope it did not get much worse as we moved farther and farther out. Or turn tail and head for home in a more comfortable following sea, arriving back in the slip in time to take Mary to breakfast at the Donut Hole. Or split the difference by seeing if there was a heading we could tolerate and stay out and fish without going too much deeper into the Gulf.

Roffs showed a possible color break between blue and blue-green water east of the Squiggles, some 30 miles to the east, but still only 50 nm or so from home, so we turned due east, taking the 4 footers on the starboard beam. Hammerhead rolled like a pig. You had to press your feet against the aft bulkhead and jam your elbow and forearm between the cushion and the starboard bulkhead to avoid being rolled out of the rack as you tried and failed to sleep. But it was tolerable, and tolerate it we did until the sun came up.

We had our spread out in blue water by 0600, trolling to the east. But we did not find a color break. After a couple of hours of a lot of nothing, rolling and rolling, we back tracked, fishing north of west toward the Nipple. We eventually came on a north to south weed line to die for in cobalt blue water. It was at least ten yards wide and a mile and a half to two miles long, with bait, birds, and flying fish. We dragged our wares up and down it four times without even a knock down.

So, perhaps impatiently and unwisely, we set off once again to the west. A little after mid-day, we came upon a legless chair with a white vinyl cushion on the seat floating upside down in blue water, covered in barnacles and covered up with mahi. I am ashamed to admit that we only went one for four on mahi bites. I have no excuses, but I do have explanations, lame as they are. One mahi was lost to bad angling. One to bad luck. And the third, a bull in the 20 to 30 pound range, was lost to bad judgment, as we intentionally left him in the water to attract others until he finally came unstuck right at the transom as I reached for him with the gaff.

Lesson Number 1 For The Trip: If you have a fish hooked that is bigger than a loaf of bread, stick it at your first opportunity and put it in the box.

Lesson Number 2 For The Trip: If you have a live bait, put it out when you stop in a school of marlin food hanging out on something that has been floating in the water for some time.

This lesson was learned when we pulled in our spread, backed up to the chair, and began tossing lures on spinning rods at the chicken dolphin, just playing around. Eric and Mike were casting, and I was standing in the cockpit watching, when it happened. No more than 20 yards from the transom, a 300 to 400 pound blue marlin exploded out of the water, spraying chicken dolphin skyward in a veritable fish fountain, then fell back in a great splash, creating another, smaller geyser of terrified schoolies. It was a real Guy Harvey moment.

I was so surprised I almost soiled myself. By the time I had recovered my wits, gotten underway, and put the spread back out, the marlin was gone. And there definitely wasn't a mahi with a lick of sense within 10 miles.

It was then I remembered there was a marlin snack size juvenile ambejack swimming around in the bait well, waiting for a close encounter of the worst kind with The Man in the Blue Suit. I let him go.

We were in the slip with one small mahi, mildly bruised bodies and badly bruised egos in time to console ourselves with a few Cuba Libres before eating a wonderful dinner Mary had waiting for us.

Next time out I hope for fewer lessons and more fish.

Big Bill, a Billfish, and a Boy

This past week end, not weekend, the Hammerheads - Papa, Eric, and Freemanator - fished on Blue Heaven (45 Cabo Express) with the the Mitchell brothers, Drew and Bart, and Bill Sundberg, a friend of Drew's. Bill is the son of former Chief Justice Alan Sundberg, a brilliant man with whom I worked way back when I was still somebody and he was still alive. And, as you can see in the photo below, Bill is also somehow related to Andre the Giant and Abraham Lincoln.

Over the last couple of weeks, there were multiple reports of blue marlin, yellow fin tuna, and wahoo waiting beyond the horizon to test the mettle of enterprising fishermen, including a first hand report from Wayne Lewis about the 200 plus pound blue marlin he released and the 55 pound wahoo he kept Saturday a week ago and a third hand report from Ed Gobel through Mark Yanora to the Mitchell clan of big yellow fin over toward the rigs a few days ago. I resolved to do my part in thinning out this unexpected bumper crop of Spring pelagics in the northeastern Gulf, and Drew pinky swore he could be counted on to make the trip, excepting only weather. And just as if the Almighty wasn't really All Knowing and wanted to see what Drew would do, a weather window opened early in the week that would not close until Friday night. After factoring in the exigencies of work for those who work, Thursday and Friday was settled upon as the appointed time for our adventure.

Both ELINT and HUMINT (The military veterans among you can explain these terms to the others.) agreed that the nasty ass water pouring out of the mouth of the Mississippi was pushing the blue water we sought south and east at a good clip, while incidentally wreaking billions of dollars of economic damage and ruining thousands of lives upstream. The Thursday afternoon Roff's Report showed the western edge of the blue water at the Double Nipple, 95 nautical miles to the southwest, so we decided to head that way at dusk, bumping along through the moonlit night at 8 knots into the predicted two foot head sea, expecting to find ourselves in green water at dawn, at which time we would troll east, hoping to find a hard edge when we caught up with the retreating blue water.

And that is the way it worked out, except that there was no hard edge. It was more like a transition area in which the water went from green to blue-green to Thank you, Baby Jesus, Blue in short order, accompanied by a relatively steep water temperature gradient. The Mitchells ran three teasers: a Black Bart Extreme Breakfast on the left teaser, bowling pins on the left corner and a pink squid daisy chain on the right teaser. There were five hooks in the water: a Pakula Wombat on a bent butt 80 on the left short, a Black Bart 1656 Angle on a bent butt 80 on the right short, a Bob Schneider St. Thomas Prowler on a straight 50 on the left long fished from the cover board, a Mean Joe Green Cabo Shaker on a straight 50 on the right long fished from the cover board, and down the center, some 300 yards out, a select ballyhoo with a blue and white Ilander on its nose behind a bird teaser on a bent butt 80 fished from the chair.

Our first action came early, less than an hour after lines in. Bang! Knock down on the center rigger. As I am usually at the helm on Hammerhead and seldom touch a rod anymore, I decided to take advantage of my status as a guest aboard Blue Heaven. I elbowed Bill Sundberg in the kidneys, shoved him out of the way as he gasped for breath, and jumped into the chair with the bent butt 80. And it was a struggle, a big yellow fin for sure. Or maybe it was just the drag of the big belly in 300 plus yards of 80 pound monofilament with a bird teaser and a stunned 23 pound bull mahi pinned to the end of the line, all providing ample resistance for a 62 year old angler whose best days were some time ago and not all that impressive even then. As you can see from the expression on my face as I wound in the fish with Freemanator driving the chair, it is fortunate that there wasn't 50 more yards of line out or that the mahi wasn't five pounds heavier, or my colleagues would have had to use the defribrillator paddles on me.

Eric, Hammerhead's primary angler, practiced his gaffing technique, proving he needs practice, but managing to get the fish in the box nonetheless.

Not long after my Mahi Moment, I was sitting on the right cover board with my hand on the reel of the bent butt 80, thinking about asking for a refund on my gym membership, when the 50 right behind me went off, drag screaming. "Billfish! Billfish!' Drew shouted from the tower. A white marlin had made a kamikaze run on the Mean Joe Green Cabo Shaker on the long right and scored a direct hit.

I wheeled, grabbed the 50, yelled, "Freeman! Get in the chair!", kicked an advancing Bill Sundberg in the groin, and passed the rod to Freeman as Bill doubled over. At ten, Freeman is too small for the chair, even with the bucket seat straps shortened and the foot rest as far up as it will go. His toes just managed to get some purchase on the foot rest with his fanny on the edge of the seat, and the bucket was no help at all, as you can see in the photo below, so it was all on Freemanator, with quiet encouragement from his father, a lot of counterproductive exhortations from his grandfather, who you can see chirping away in the background, and some judicious boat handling by Drew.Freemanator was equal to the task, pumping and reeling, level winding, and pretty much ignoring all of my advice, little of which was helpful and none of which was necessary.

Bart leadered the fish, I billed him, and into the boat it came for its close up. If there are any among you who wonder why men fish, look at this boy's face. This was a nice white, Freemanator's first, and it was successfully released without any injury other than to its pride. Another hour had not passed before Drew called out, "Here she comes! Right side! Right side!" I looked up and saw a cow mahi greyhounding in from two o'clock. She definitely meant business, but lacked control, crashing into the short right, knocking it out of the clip, but missing the hook. She skidded sideways into a sharp clockwise turn, like a running dog trying to get traction on a hardwood floor, and charged the same lure again. This time she found the hook. The drag on the 80 sang out. I took the rod out of the cover board, and turned to find Big Bill already sitting in the chair, grinning like the Chesire Cat. The chair is not too small for Bill, and an 80 is a gracious plenty of rod and reel, so it didn't take long before another 20 plus pound mahi was in the box, although less damage would have been done to the meat if Eric had shot her anywhere near the head with a 20 guage shotgun instead of gaffing her where he did. Practice, practice, practice.

At this point it was only mid-morning, but the action was almost all over. Almost, but not quite. From time to time, we would see big yellow fin busting not far away, jumping clear of the water. But every time we approached, they would go down, and we never found the right combination of meat and plastic to entice them to eat. And our own Captain Ahab, was able to call out from the crow's nest "Whale, ho!" as we passed close to a sperm whale, which saluted us with a spout of water.

Noon found us chugging up the Canyon east of the Dumping Ground in gorgeous blue water. But no birds, no bait, no grass. Good time for lunch. Or a terrorist attack. Unheralded by the usual alarm from Drew in the tower, a white marlin slashes in close, coming from left to right. Knocks down the short left. Knocks down the short right. Pulls drag. Drops the lure. I reel, reel, reel, with Drew overhead yelling, "Reel, reel, reel!" Sure enough, the fish comes in again, wagging bill out of the water, hotter than a $2 pistol on Saturday night. Bart drops back a pitch bait. The terrorist grabs it in its mouth. Turns. Looks back at Bart with contempt in its big ol' eye. Spits out the bait. And is gone.

Then it was over. At 2 PM, with an approaching front threatening to get between us and the house, we picked them up and began the 75 nautical mile run in, tired, happy, and excited. After all, it is only early May.

Puttin'em Back

On Friday night, one of the outlaw gang that put out the cobia FADs last weekend, as described in my previous posting, was captured. That sucker was tortured for hours, forced to drink rum and diet coke and eat smoked tuna dip until he cracked and gave up the coordinates of the FADs. With this information in hand, the plan was to do a FAD check on Saturday aboard the Mitchells' (Drew and Bart) 45 Cabo Express, Blue Heaven. But first, there was choring to be done, which was just as well as there was a dense fog Saturday morning that would last most of the day. The chore du jour was dropping the new Lee triple spreader outriggers on the Mitchells' (Pete and Melanie) 54 Hatteras, Anonymous, and waxing them and stringing them with outrigger lines, a task accomplished in relatively short order by a few actual workers seconded by many hangers on and critics.

After lunch, Blue Heaven slipped out through the lingering fog crewed by Captain Drew, assisted by Pete, who was like a cat on a screen door in the role of Radar Watcher and Collision Preventer, with the Freemanator, Eric Songer (the Freemanator's father), and Papa working in the cockpit under the lash of Bart, mate extraordinaire.

Both Fads were where they were supposed to be and, as seen deep in the water from the tower, floating pretty much as intended. But, after only a week, there was as yet no bait to speak of on either FAD and, consequently, no cobia. Disappointed, but determined not to waste the remainder of the day day or the fuel, we decided to engage in a little catch and release red snapper fishing at a spot the location of which could only be pried out of me with copious amounts of rum and diet coke and smoked tuna dip.

Of course, red snapper is closed, and everything we caught was released to live to fight (or breed) another day, save one legal scamp that made the ride home and an unfortunate red snapper gobbled up by a porpoise after release. The snapper were big, and they were testy, so a good time was had by all hands. If a picture is indeed worth a thousand words, then here are seven thousand words.

That's Just Wrong!

Fish attracting devices (FADs) that are anchored to the bottom and float beneath the surface of the water are illegal, probably because they are made of nondegradable materials and pose a hazard to navigation if they break loose and drift about. For the unitiated among you, a typical FAD is a 5x8 plastic tarpaulin zip tied to a PVC frame. One end of the frame has a polypropelene bridle tied to the corners. A polypropelene anchor line is tied to the center of the bridle and to a makeshift anchor weighing around 75 pounds. Crab trap buoys are attached to the corners where the bridle is tied to prevent the whole contraption from sinking to the bottom, and a couple of small sections of a flotation noodle are zip tied to the other end of the frame to make it float as well. The anchor line is only long enough to allow the FAD to float about 15 feet below the surface. The intended effect of this Rube Goldberg engineering is a plastic door floating horizontally beneath the surface, on which grows flora and fauna, which attracts small bait, which attracts larger bait, which attracts weary, migrating cobia, who take up residence in the shade of the FAD and leisurely avail themselves of the amazing and unexpected bait buffet, waiting in ignorance for the FAD outlaws to come and harvest them. As I said, FADs are illegal, so I and my kith and kin would never stoop to engage in such nefarious activity. Well, maybe not nefarious. After all, FADs are not malum in se like murder or incest; they are malum prohibitum like jaywalking or shooting dove at a water hole at dusk. Which I suppose was the exculpatory rationale of the outlaw gang I heard about on Saturday. I was told that a scurvy lot of scofflaws departed from Destin Harbor Saturday morning to deploy two FADs to the west in 60 feet of water about five nautical miles apart. They were led by two ruffians who shall go unnamed, and who, like Rooster Cogburn, are known on the docks and in the dives of the northeastern Gulf coast to be ruthless men, double tough; fear don't enter into their thinking. Actually, it is also widely known that these two don't do much thinking at all, as illustrated by the fact that I was told they forgot the crab trap buoys, an inexplicable omission that bid fair to bring their entire criminal enterprise to naught. But a child's life jacket and a flotation cushion were pressed into service, and these improvisations worked well enough, as both FADs deployed as intended. Later, the smug members of the gang were seen lolling about East Pass marina in the sun or cavorting in a nearby swimming pool like porpoises as, over the horizon, small crustaceans began to affix themselves to the underside of the FADs, beginning the circle of life that will result, the malefactors hope, in the death of a number of delicious cobia. Bad doings all around.

Dedicated to Scientific Research

Grouper are closed. Snapper are closed. And amberjack are, well, amberjack. Sure, the Spring cobia run is beginning, but the buggy top on my upper station does not come off, so casting from the tower is not an option, not to mention that taking my outriggers off and casting from the bow, or whatever, seems like a lot of trouble, particularly when the cobia would have to be the size of a submersible for me to see them with my tired, old eyes.

But what about swordfish? Are they out there in the Winter, when the weather is usually too snotty to pound offshore and hang on a chute during a long night, or in the Spring, when catching cobia off the beach beats the hell out of a 120 nautical mile round trip to go swordfishing?

The intrepid crew of the Hammerhead resolved to research this question, at least with respect to the presence of swordfish in the Spring. So, this past Friday, a couple of hours before sunset, a snorting and snarling Hammerhead debouched from East Pass bound for the Spur, delighted to be underway on the first deep water foray of the year. On board were your correspondent, the Freemanator, Tenser and Nicholas Mallette, and Bart Mitchell.

We arrived on station about six nautical miles south and a tad east of the tip of the Spur after sunset, and deployed the chute and two Hydroglow lights under a full moon that would not set until dawn. This posed another question: would the bright moonlight inhibit the bite? With the moon in mind, Bart suggested we fish deep, so we put a Boston mackerel down past 300 feet, a rigged squid at 200 feet, and another squid at 75 feet.

Our first guest was a small Mako that swam figure eights behing the transom and around the lines for some time before disappearing. Then it was Strange Critter Time. (See, Psalms 107:23,24 NKJV) Portugese Man of Wars drifted by. We netted a two inch juvenile flying fish. And we saw what looked like ropes of living bubble wrap, one of which had moved into a shell like a hermit crab.

We began to stand our watches at 2300, chunking slowly from two flats of Boston mackerel. At 0300, I came on deck to relieve Bart, who told me that there had been a bite on the deep line a half hour before, probably a sword, because the mackerel had been pinched off behind the gill plates, not bitten through. Not much action, really. I noticed that our initial drift had changed 40 degrees to the east, so I decided we should move back south and west, closer the the Canyon wall.

While we were clearing lines in preparation for the move, the deep line, another mackerel, got bit. The Freemanator, who was on his first sword trip, put on a kidney harness and accepted the challenge. Nicholas held onto the back of the harness to make sure that a tip wrap or some other mishap did not result in the loss of my grandson in 1700 feet of water in the middle of the night. In a little under half an hour (the rod and reel was a 30 with 10 pounds of drag), a more or less legal sword was on the deck, and the incipient legend of the Freemanator had grown a bit more.

I then ignored the time tested admonition against leaving fish to look for fish, and moved the boat. There was, of course, nary another nibble before the sun rose, when we picked'em up to run home. On the way in, we decided to stop on the Ozark to see if anything around the old ship wanted breakfast. Our offering was live squid that Grasshopper, the young mate on the Outta Here, had netted for me in the marina prior to our departure.

The first line was no sooner down than bang, a scamp. Then bang, another. The action was steady, if not red hot. By the time we headed for the hill an hour or so later, we had lost as many rigs by hanging the wreck as we had caught fish, but we had boated eight scamp, a snowy grouper, which I had never seen before, and three amberjacks, one of which the Freemanator pumped up out of 300 feet of water on a spinning rod.

So, now we know: there are swords out there in the Spring, and they will eat on a full moon. But new questions must be answered. Both bites came on a Boston mackerel on the deep line. Was that chance? Was it because it was the deep line? Or was it because the bait was a mackerel and not a squid? And why were there scamp and snowy grouper on the Ozark in 300 feet of water? They usually are found much deeper, and I have never caught them on the Ozark before.

These are important questions, and, clearly, further research warranted.