You Go, Grandma

Yesterday was dues paying time on Blind Hog. There was a 120 nautical mile round trip to the Spur in a nasty 2 to 4 foot Gulf chop, with the Freemanator, Justin Goff, and Lisa Weber aboard, dodging thunderstorms all day to catch two - count'em, two - mahi.

The real fun began when, at 5 PM, the port engine shut down 12 nautical miles from the Destin sea buoy and could not be restarted. So, I lashed the port shaft to the engine mount to prevent the screw from turning and burning up the transmission, and on we came, at 6 knots, in a beam sea.

Steering on one engine in a twin screw boat is problematic, because you can only go straight by maximum over steering at a low speed to counteract the thrust of the one screw, which very much wants to turn the boat, in this case, to port. But I wasn't too worried, because I had actually come in on one engine in Blind Hog once before, and it had not been all that difficult getting him in the slip.

Upon arriving at the sea buoy two hours later, my relief was short lived. I realized that because of the steering challenge, the east wind, and a strong current, I could not get between the rock jetties and into the comparative safety of East Pass without significant risk of piling up on the west jetty.

I called Mary to report our situation, and she said she coud see us from the balcony, circling counterclockwise, trying to get enough easting and enough nerve to attempt the entry. But it was a no go on both fronts.

We called for a tow. They said they would be there in an hour, but they were not in sight an hour and a half later. It was dark by then and too rough to anchor with confidence off the beach, so I decided to chance going in, with Lisa in the tower and Justin on the bow to spot jetties and buoys that were almost invisible in the combination of overcast darkness and the glare of all the lights that are Destin at the height of the summer season. (My radar is, of course, in the shop, but, hey, I knew I wouldn't need it, because this was only a day trip.)  Freeman was standing on the gunwale, holding on to the tower leg, relaying info between me and my lookouts. I did not call Mary, because there was nothing she could do, and I did not want to worry her.

Creeping along at three knots, we made it through the jetties. All went well until I attempted the starboard turn into Destin Harbor, and, once again, I could not get my bow around against the east wind and the falling tide running out of the harbor. I was trapped in the 30 yard gap between Noriego Point and the docks at Harbor Walk. I could maintain my position by alternately backing and going forward, thus avoiding being carried down on the pilings of the nearby East Pass Bridge, but I could not get in the harbor.

"There is Grandma," Freeman said. Sure enough, there was all 22 feet of Honey's Money with Mary at the wheel and Bart and Pete Mitchell aboard.  They tossed us a line, but try as she might, Mary and her little boat could not pull Blind Hog's bow around, and she was in danger of me pushing her into the docks as I fought to hold my position. We had to cast off the line.

At that moment - and the timing could not have been better - the tow boat finally arrived and took us in tow.  Mary led the tow boat to my slip, where she and the Mitchells jumped out on the dock, tossed us lines, and pulled the Hog into his slip by main force. It was 10 PM.

An hour later, Freeman and I were sitting at the kitchen bar after a shower as Mary warmed seafood soup she had made for us earlier.

"Mary, what possessed you to come out in your little boat in this wind in the middle of the night," I asked.

She shrugged. "I saw you head for the jetties, and I knew you might need help.  Just part of my job.  Do you boys want hot sauce with your soup?"

Love me some Grandma.

What Time Is It?

I frequently have trouble finding crew, and Blind Hog often fishes short handed.  But this weekend was the exception to the rule. There were five - count'em, five - on the crew manifest yesterday: me, Wayne Lewis, Justin Goff, Lisa Weber, and Matt Gaetz. And Wayne, Justin, and Lisa are Curly Tails Blind Hogs of long standing to boot, so I not only had a surfeit of hands, I had experienced hands, Able Seamen all.

Blind Hog left the slip at first light. 

No, wait, that's not right. We were supposed to leave at first light, but Justin and Lisa, whose last names I condense into GoWeb, overslept due to a faulty alarm and had to be awakened by the High Hog his damned self pounding on their condo door. But they came sprinting down the dock to the boat in a matter of minutes, brushing their teeth with one hand and pulling up their britches with the other. We only lost fifteen minutes of daylight, but this uncharacteristic faux pas on the part of the GoWebs was a portent - Time, and the means by which it is told, were going to be a problem on this day.

 GoWebs

We ran the 60 nautical miles to the Spur, had lines in the water by 0815, and began to troll south. We soon found blue water and a good weed line where expected, but it was a good weed line being beaten to death by ten first rate boats spaced out to the horizon, which was not expected, but should have been - another tournament weekend. So, we headed west into the Dumping Ground and found more weed lines. And more boats. But no fish.

Plan B: live bait.  In the early afternoon, we pull in our trolling spread and ease up to a series of large weed patches with birds perched on them, taking a break, and small schools of bait darting about. I am steering from the tower. Justin puts a medium size hard tail on a spinning rod and casts it to the edge of the weed patch. Five mahi immediately emerge from the beneath the weed patch, and one is a sho' 'nuff stud bull dolphin, with a head the size of a trash can lid. The big bull inhales the hard tail.  Everyone can see what I see, and we are all yelling, "Let'im eat! Let'im eat!", as if Justin has never  fished live bait before and has no idea how a circle hook works.  And, just in case he is indeed an idiot, in a few seconds more we are all yellng, "Lock it up! Lock it up!" In his own good time, Justin takes the reel out of free spool, the line comes tight, the circle hook corkscrews into the corner of the mahi's mouth just as it is designed to do, and, as you can see, our quarry gets air right behind the boat.

Going Vertical

He is big, 50 pounds, maybe even a little more. Not quite the biggest mahi I have ever seen, but certainly the biggest mahi ever caught on a Shoat Boat by far.  If we can catch him, that is. 

The fish jumps and twists, trying to spit the hook, but can't. He digs down, but Justin pumps him up. He makes for the weed patches, but I drag him away with the boat. And he greyhounds straight away from the transom of the boat, leaping three, four, five times, with me backing Blind Hog hard after him.

  

Going Away

After half an hour, our prize is under control.  Justin is wielding the rod with skill and confidence. I have not screwed the pooch by backing over the line.  Twice the fish is close enough to the boat for us to see color in the water. Then he is at the boat, but 20 feet down. Justin is pumping him up. Wayne is at his side with the long gaff.  Matt is waiting behind the fighting chair, prepared to back Wayne up with the short gaff. I am ready to bump the boat ahead to straighten the fish out for the gaff shot when he comes to the surface. At that moment, Time, and the means for its telling, intervenes, as was foreshadowed by the GoWeb sleep-in.

With the rod bent almost double as he lifts the fish, Justin somehow hits the free spool switch on the rear of the Penn spinning reel. A big loop of braid line leaps off the spool and lassos his watch, a Rolex Submariner with a black face. And the braid line breaks.  We snatch defeat from the jaws of victory in a split second.  Everyone is stunned, speechless.

Justin is devastated, but undoubtedly grateful that it was the line that broke rather than the band of his Rolex, as he was leaning out of the boat over the water and the watch would have been lost. I understand his perspective, but there are two other Rolex Submariners on the boat, both with a blue face, which is prettier than black in my opinion, and there ain't no fish in the box. Given a choice, we are long on watches and short on fish. Know what I'm saying?

We put our trolling spread back, half heartedly dragging our lures and baits around for another hour, as if the day does not lie in ruins, but we finally give up the pretense and begin the long run home. About 15 nm from the house, Lisa, who has the eyes of a young eagle and is the only crew member other than the High Hog who is actually awake, says, "I see grass."  Sure enough, there are two large grass patches to port. In 247 feet of dirty green water.  The odds are long and it's late, but what the hell? 

I back up to the smaller of the two patches, and Justin casts a small, live cigar minnow to the edge of the grass.  The bait is hardly wet before there is a swirl of water and the drag on the spnning reel begins to sing. It's 5:45 PM Central Daylight Savings Time.

"Lisa!" Justin yells.  "Take off my watch! Take off my watch!" Really? The watch again? Lisa fumbles with the watch as Justin holds the rod with one hand.  "Hurry, Lisa! Hurry!"  But Lisa doesn't wear a Rolex, and she cannot negotiate the safety catch on the watch band.  A brief but spirited exchange occurs between them as Lisa struggles with the watch and Justin fights the mystery fish at a considerable disadvanage.  I am thinking the watch is bad luck, like having bananas on the boat; it has already cost us a trophy fish, and now the GoWebs are butting heads over it.  Lisa throws up her hands in frustration and walks away. But Wayne, who wears a Submariner, steps in, flips the safety catch, and removes the watch.

The opportunity for redemption has arrived, and everyone is ready. Lisa climbs into the tower to call down what she sees as the fight progresses.  Wayne is again at Justin's side, gaff at the ready, giving me driving instructions by hand signal in deference to the combination of my indifferent hearing and the rumble of the engines.  Matt is at his post, armed as before. I am at the lower helm, spinning the boat, surging forward, or backing down into a following sea with water sluicing into the cockpit through the scuppers and splashing over the transom, soaking Justin. I am determined that this fish will neither dump the spinning reel nor get under the boat and cut off.

A big mahi again? Probably not; the mystery fish never jumps.  Shark? Cobia? Most likely a shark. What a disappointment that would be. The early excitement fades as the fight lengthens. And lengthen even more. The spinning rod and reel, a relatively light rig, are overmatched, but Justin is a capable angler, and he is determined to get the Mahi Monkey off his back. And we have Blind Hog, whose transmissions I am prepared to wreck if that is what it takes to to catch this fish.

Half an hour. An hour. An hour and fifteen minutes. It feels as if I am getting a blister on my ass rubbing against the wheel as I face aft and work the throttles in the rolling boat. Justin is made of stern stuff, but he is slowly wearing down. Is the fish wearing down? Hard to tell.  Then we, or at least Lisa, start seeing color every now and then.  And the fish's runs are getting shorter. It's shaking its head, circling. Tuna? Yes, a tuna. One hour and thirty five minutes after hook up, Wayne gaffs a 30 to 40 pound yellowfin tuna caught on a Shimano 8000 Baitrunner strung with 60 pound test line and leader and set with too little drag, about eight pounds, no more than ten.

That's right, the Fishing Gods put a little yellowfin where it shouldn't have been out of pity for us, and let us catch it. And they know their business; it's amazing how big a difference one small fish can make in everyone's attitude when the skunk is still in the boat at the end of a long, frustrating day.

This morning, while we were cleaning up Blind Hog, I suggested to Justin that on future trips he leave his watch at home. Or at least get a blue face on the damned thing.

The Black Banana

There's Nothing Like A Big Girl

The fact that there have been no Fishing Reports this year is, for once, not due to my laziness.  There was nothing to report.  In May and early June,  I made four offshore trips - three on Bella Maria and one on Blind Hog - and the total catch was one wahoo that was nothing to write home about, so I didn't write home about it. In the beginning, the water, although cobalt blue, was too cold, unseasonably so.  There was no bait, so there were no fish.  When the water temperature finally reached the mid-70s, there was some bait but still no fish to speak of. Some folks caught some wahoo, including a few studs, but not my kith and kin.

But that was then. A week ago this past Saturday the Hog headed for the Spur with its core crew of the usual suspects - yours truly, the Freemanator, and his father, Eric Songer. We were accompanied by an 11 year old friend of Freeman's who had never been out of sight of land, one Maurico Hyde. The water was still blue, but the bait was sparse, and we found nothing to fish on - no color breaks, no weed lines, no floating debris.  Yet the action began almost immediately with open water bites. There were four good knockdowns by mystery fish during the first couple of hours, but no hookups. 

Then the left long line, a skirted ballyhoo, goes off with a bang and a billfish goes vertical behind the boat. "White marlin! White marlin!" The Freemanator dives for the rod and goes to work. In short order, he brings the fish to the boat, and Eric gets his hand on the wind on leader but the fish is too green, so he dumps it.  Before long, the fish is back at the boat, and Eric takes a wrap on the leader, officially completing the catch preparatory to releasing the fish. No need. As soon as Eric applies pressure on the leader, a nice sized and very angry white marlin goes postal right at the transom, and pulls the hook. Score one for the Ancient and Honorable Order of the Blind Hog, whose ranks Maurico Hyde has just joined.

An hour later, something smacks the long center line, a lure.  The Freemanator, who is lolling on the helm deck half asleep, feels the bite before I hear the clip go and is up and on the rod like a jack in the box.  "Fish on! Fish on!" 

Another white, but this one is a tougher customer. The Freemanator is now fighting the eighth billfish of his career, but he is still only twelve, so Eric reaches around him from behind and snaps on a kidney harness, and hooks it to the reel. As he pulls his hands back, he inadvertantly knocks the drag into freespool. 

"Bird's nest!" Eric yells. The line is backlashed into a knot impossible to sort out in the heat of battle. If the fish makes a run and comes tight against the knot, he will break off.

"I'm backing down," I shout to Freeman. "Reel! Reel!" And he does, gaining line as I back the boat, water surging into the cockpit through the scuppers, spray blowing in over the transom.  But then the fish sounds, and I cannot back anymore without backing over the line.

"Freeman, it's all on you," I shout to him over the rumble of the engines. "You cannot let him get to the knot. If he keeps fighting down and starts taking line, tighten the drag, son. Don't give him anything.  Stop him or pop him."

And Freeman does stop him. The line angle slowly increases as Freeman pumps and reels, and then the marlin is back on top, cavorting behind the boat.  In a few more minutes, Eric has the leader, and the fish you see in the photo, not as large as the first, but feistier, is at the boat, angry and lit up neon blue. That's two billfish for the day.  Anything that happens after this is gravy.

We almost added a ladle of gravy when we hooked up a 30 to 40 pound mahi, but he jumped himself off before we even had the teasers in the boat. And then the tantalizing possibility of a hat trick offers itself.  I ask Eric to check the condition of the ballyhoo on the long right line. I turn my back to look ahead as he pops the line out of the clip and begins to reel the bait in. 

"Fish on! Fish on!"

I wheel around, and Eric has a bowed rod in hand, with line peeling off the reel.  There is an out of place rod sitting in the transom rod holder, but it does not register with me.  Suddenly, Eric's rod straightens. Fish off. Eric drops back as I keep the boat in gear, and then reels furiously.  The fish attacks again. I see him clearly. Another white.  It misses the hook. Eric repeats the process. Now I notice the rod in the transom, but its meaning still doesn't sink in.  The fish attacks a third time, misses the hook once more, gives up, and swims away.

Too late, I finally get it.  While Eric was reeling in the ballyhoo, a natural bait that is the equivalent of a Hershey bar to a white marlin, the fish hit a large, plastic blue marlin lure running on the right short line.  Eric stuck the rod with the ballyhoo on the line into the nearest rod holder, and grabbed the rod with the lure.  That is when I turned around.  White marlin are notoriously finicky eaters, and the size and texture of the artificial lure was not to his liking.  But he clearly wanted to eat something, anything.  All I had to do was step into the cockpit and drop that nice smelling, nice tasting ballyhoo back to him, and we would have had him.  But I thought Eric had the rod with the ballyhoo. Coulda, woulda, shoulda. But a great day all the same.

Fired up by going two for three on whites, we were more ambitious this past weekend.  Blind Hog departed on Friday afternoon for some overnight swordfishing and a day of trolling.  Aboard were moi, the Freemanator, Tenser Mallette, who is one of my good luck charms, and Bobby Leger, an intense fishing fool who makes me look like a piscatorial dilettante.  Bobby believes in live bait like a Southern Baptist believes in the Resurrection, so he arranged with Jughead, the bait man, for us to have a dozen or so medium size hard tails in the live well, just in case.

That night, we did nothing to deplete the stock of Xiphias Gladius in the Gulf of Mexico. We only had one bite, and no hook up.  But - drum roll, please - the Freemanator saw a school of big hard tails swimming in the light around the boat and managed to catch a couple, including a hoss, that joined its brethren in the live well to await its appointment with destiny.

At dawn, we began troll, but soon came upon yellow fin tuna feeding in the water ahead.  Tuna are big on eating an early breakfast, and we decided to serve hard tails on circle hooks.  Almost immediately Tenser hooked up. On a big spinning rod, mind you, which made the fight much more interesting than it might have been otherwise. After some time, a lot of effort, and a fair amount of chaffing from the rest of us, Tenser had a nice 90 pound tuna boatside, from whence it went into the fish box without further ado.

As we were readying more hard tails for tuna, we saw a big blue marlin chasing his breakfast - the yellow fin tuna trying to eat their breakfast.  Out comes the hoss hard tail.  Bobby bridles it with a circle hook, drops it back, and puts it in the left long line clip. I begin to bump the boat around, slow trolling the live bait, trying to entice the marlin to eat. For an hour and a half we scour an area no bigger than a football field, seeing the marlin, still feeding, four more times.  But nada.

As I lack a poker face, Bobby sees that I am ready to move on. He pops the line out of the clip. "I am going to drop this hard tail way back," he tells me. "If nothing happens in ten minutes, we'll go." The second he begins to drop the hard tail farther back, the marlin appears from nowhere, lunges at it and misses. Bobby puts the reel in freespool, his thumb on the line to prevent a backlash. The hard tail has seen the marlin as clearly as the marlin has seen it, and literally runs for its life. That provocative dash for survival seals its fate. In a whirlpool swirl of water the marlin inhales the hard tail. Bobby waits. And waits some more. Line is running off the reel. Swallow fish, swallow. Bobby pushes the drag lever forward. The line comes tight. The circle hook corkscrews into the corner of the marlin's mouth. And all hell breaks loose. It is 9:18 AM.

As you can see in the photo, Bobby is harnessed and focused, with Tenser just behind him to grab the harness and  keep him in the boat if necessary.

 Line is screaming off the reel now, as if 25 pounds of drag was but a bagatelle. In what seems like only seconds, the monofilament is gone and the marlin is in the power pro backing on the reel.  "She's gonna dump us!" Bobby yells to me. "Chase her! Chase her!"

It is common to back down on a big fish, but chasing one with the pointy end of the boat is something else altogether, at least in my limited experience.  As I am spinning the boat with one engine in forward, the other in reverse, and my heart in my throat, Bobby is yelling, "Hurry! Hurry!" 

After an eternity, I finally get the boat headed in the same direction as the fish, but at a slight angle, so that I do not run over the line.  I push the throttles forward, and we're off.  There is a big center console outboard boat dead ahead, also live baiting, that has to have seen our hook up and the resulting Chinese fire drill, but has made no move to give us room, as courtesy requires.  I start blowing the horn.  Freeman and Tenser are hanging out of both sides of the boat, waving their arms. I ain't turning, and I ain't slowing down.  I won't hit the boat, which is crewed by five startled looking men and one wildly gesticulating woman, but I will plow through their baits if I must, chewing up lines and snapping rods. They pull away in time.

Bobby is now reeling. He is gaining line, and some of the color has returned to his face, so I conclude that the first crisis has passed. We are not going to be dumped. I slow the boat, and spin it once more to get the line behind the boat and the fight back within the usual parameters. 

In half an hour the fish is coming to the boat. Tenser takes my place at the wheel, and I pull on the gloves to leader the fish, worried that it is too soon, that she is too green, that I might screw up and get my old ass snatched out of the cockpit. I needn't have worried. As soon as I touch the leader, she makes a long run, fighting down. Twice more she will come to the boat, and twice more she will take off,  always fighting down.  We never see her. Time slows to a crawl. Bobby, who is young and strong, is being tested. From time to time, we hold a bottle of water to his lips for him to drink, and then we pour the rest on his neck and shoulders to cool him off. The battle seesaws back and forth.  She takes line, Bobby takes line. But we have an advantage. We have the boat. We back down when we can.  We try to plane her up by pulling her down sea. We circle her to change the angle of the pressure. Anything to break the stalemate. Slowly, Bobby begins to gain on her.

At 11:38 AM, two hours and twenty minutes into the fight, I take a wrap on the leader and pull a really big girl to the boat. Bobby gets rid of the rod and bills her, so I can cut the line away from the hook, which will rust out.  She weighs more than 400 pounds, maybe as much as 500. She is exhausted.  We may have killed her. Tenser keeps the boat moving forward as we pull her along, passing water over her gills.  Her mouth is opening, closing, opening, closing. Have we done enough to undo what we did to her? When Bobby turns her loose, she noses over and sinks away.  I see her belly, a bad sign. But then she rolls upright, and, just before I lose sight of her in the depths, I see her kick her tail, once, twice, and then swim. The best possible ending.

Blue marlin more than twice the size of this fish have been caught in the Gulf, and tournament winners are almost always bigger, but this is the biggest fish I have ever seen in person, and a school boy and three regular guys with day jobs caught her on Blind Hog. Glory days. 

Against All Hope

Last Friday about mid-day I received a text from Plain Wayne, the owner of Bella Maria, a 52 Viking convertible renowned in our little corner of the world for both fishing and catching, which ain't the same things, asking me if I wanted to go fishing on Saturday and advising me that the Freemanator would be welcome as well, which is always a sure fire draw for me.   For those of you have not met him before in these pages, Plain Wayne is Wayne Lewis, successful restauranteur, accomplished raconteur, and compulsivel fisherman with whom I have enjoyed a lot of good times afloat and ashore. But in The Fishing Reports, because he lacks an official title like Cap'n John or a cool nickname like Freemanator, he is henceforth just Plain Wayne.

I was in Tallahassee, so I needed to get a green light from the War Department, pick up Freeman from school, drive to Destin, choke down a cheese burger and fries chased by a slice of pecan pie at Jim 'N Nicks, go to bed sober, and rise early in order to be on the boat at the appointed time of 0515. Miss Mary did in fact give us the green light, as she always does, and we were off.

Bella Maria left the slip before sunrise.  On board were Plain Wayne, Cap'n John (Tate), Justin Goff, the Freemanator, and me. We headed for the Spur to look for a push on a good temperature break shown on the Roffs Report we had ordered. 

You need to know that Plain Wayne is a no kidding troller. He occasionally swordfishes at the end of a day of trolling, but only to kill time while he is waitng for the sun to come up so he can troll some more. And his bottom fishing is limited to a couple of days each year at the beginning of red snapper season to accomodate family and friends whose attention spans are only good for a few hours on the water. But Wayne's optimism and determination notwithstanding, trolling in December is not a high percentage play, so my hopes were low - maybe a nice tuna or a wahoo or two - and my expectations were even lower. 

We had the lines in the water at 0800, with the Freemanator and Cap'n John on the bridge watching the spread and Wayne, Justin, and I working the cockpit. The water temperature was 73 to 74, which is alright, but nothing to write home about.  Not too cold for billfish, but almost. The water was, however, blue and clean.

At 1035, the left short rigger line went down with a bang, and the drag on the reel began to howl.  A nice blue marlin weighing around 200 pounds leaped into the air far back in the spread, fell back with a splash, and then grey hounded from left to right, giving us a good look at him.  Then he got serious, and made a run for it. Wayne took the rod and went to the chair. He settled into the bucket seat, and hooked into the reel. The fish was still taking line. But by the time Cap'n John made it down from the tower, where he had been steering, to the bridge, and took the engines out of gear, the fish wasn't taking line.  He was gone.  The hook had pulled. From bite to bitterness took five minutes total, maybe less.

Undaunted, we quickly put the spread back in the water and soldiered on.  At 1105, there was a monster knockdown on the shotgun line. The strike was so violent that the center rigger was whipping up and down as the mystery fish pulled drag for a few seconds. But there was no hook up.  Based on the bite, it probably a yellow fin tuna, a big one. Damn, damn, damn.

And nothing else happended from then until we picked up in the afternoon and headed home.  Nothing.  All in all, it would have been a pretty disappointing day had we not caught that other marlin early in the morning.

I'm sorry. Did I forget mention the first of our two December marlins?

At around 0840, Plain Wayne relieved Cap'n John on the wheel so that Cap'n John could go see a man about a dog. Just as John stepped off the bridge ladder into the cockpit, heading for the head, there was a knockdown on the left short rigger where we were running a Black Bart 1656 Angle with a lumo skirt. Justin went to the rod and reeled the lure quickly toward the boat, stopped, waited a moment, and then dropped it back, trying to entice the  fish, if there was one, to eat.  But to no avail. No fish.

Oh, well. Justin pulls down the rigger line. Holding the clip in his left hand and the line in his right, he is just about to close the clip and run it up the rigger when the line is snatched from his hand. The rod bows and the drag begins to sing its siren song.  I instinctively glance at my watch. It's 0843.

"Fish on!  Fish on! Clear, clear, clear."

As I rush to clear the left flat line, out of the corner of my eye I see a fish far behind the boat go vertical, then tail walk.

"Billfish! Billfish!" Wayne shouts from the bridge.  I feel, more than see, Freemanator sliding down the bridge ladder like a little fireman, heading to the right cockpit to help clear.  "White! It's a white!" Who said that? Justin? John?

Justin grabs the rod and goes to the chair, where he proceeds to open a big time can of whup ass on this fish. Justin is big, strong, and young, up on top of the reel, cranking, cranking, cranking.

This fish is not so big and, seemingly, not that strong.  It's a white marlin, after all, not The Man In The Blue Suit. Almost before we have finsihed clearing, Justin has most of the line back on the reel.  Freeman is driving the chair and taking photos. John and I put on our gloves. I will leader the fish, and John will bill him and retrieve the hook and lure before releasing him.

The wind-on leader comes out of the water. I take it and walk the fish around the corner of the transom to the right side of the cockpit.

I see color, a lot of color. A big white. But still ten feet down. So, I lift him. Damn, he's heavy. A really big white. I pull him to the surface. No, not a white. It's a blue, about 150 pounds. A rat blue, but a blue nonetheless.

In the photo below you can see the fish, the lure on his bill.  For those of you have never seen an angry  billfish all lit up and ready to rumble, note the neon blue pectoral fin.

 Cap'n John grabs the fish by the bill, and removes the hook. Freeman is taking photos, the camera strap dangling across the lens, as you can see. The fish kicks with his tail, once, twice, gathering strength, snaking alongside the boat as it idles forward. "He's coming alive! He's coming alive!" John shouts to no one in particular, sounding for all the world like Henry Frankenstein when he first sees the monster move in the original 1931 movie. "Well, turn him lose then," Wayne calls down from the bridge.

And John does. With a flick of his tail, a somewhat confused and highly insulted young marlin disappears into the depths. It's 0900.

Two blues hooked, one lost and one caught.   On December 8. The Good Book says, "Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed." Well, I'm here to tell you that ol' Abraham ain't got nothing on Plain Wayne Lewis when it comes to hoping.

CATCHING UP

Let me begin with a mea culpa. There is no excuse for it, but I am four fishing trips behind in maintaining the annals of the Ancient and Honorable Order of the Blind Hog.  Rather than boring the bejesus out of you by making you read four separate posts, I am going to catch up by condensation, relying more on photos than on my deathless prose.  I know it has been said that one picture is worth a thousand words, but it is said only by those who have never read The Fishing Reports, so I apologize for the deprivation you are about to endure. 

YOU SNOOZE, YOU LOSE

The Blind Hog made an overnight foray with the High Hog, Grasshopper, Garrett Simpson, Doug Richards, and Zack Jones aboard.  This is a real deal crew, as I was to find out to my chargrin.  We enjoyed a calm night and next day, catching a sailfish, tuna, mahi, and wahoo.  The smallest fish we caught was the sailfish below, which we actually bagged with a dip net while swordfishing. Like the sports we are, we released it rather than killing and mounting it. I did, however, want to fly a billfish flag upon our return, but those who decide such things - Wayne Lewis and Pete Mitchell, in this case - woud not sanction it.

The largest fish we boated was a yellowfin tuna that went about 100 pounds.  Doug hooked it, Zack fought it, and Grasshopper and Garrett leadered it, gaffed it, bled it, and packed it in ice, all while I was sleeping after my watch.  Wanna feel superfluous on your own boat?  Take those guys fishing with you.

BLUE HEAVEN

My next outing was another overnight on Drew Mitchell's Blue Heaven, a 45 Cabo Express, with Drew, Mark Yanora, George Alford, and Tony Delvecchio.  The fishing was slow going to say the least. There were a couple of mystery bites, including a double hook up that probably was a single big shark that ate both baits and eventually bit through one leader and, later, the other.  Not long after first light, Drew and I decided to pick them up. As I walked toward the 100 foot bait to reel it in , the tip bowed.  Fish on, literally at the last second. George, on the left in the photo with Tony, reeled in his first sword. A lawn dart of a sword, I know, but legal nonetheless. Honest. 

HOLY HAMMERHEAD!

The third trip was aboard the Blind Hog, crewed by moi, the Freemanator, Eric Songer, and Bobby Cresap. We saw a lot of action on this trip, but few results, thanks to an outbreak of human error and equipment failure that was probably caused by human error.  We boated a football blackfin tuna, lost a very nice yellowfin at the gaff, and broke off a decent - but not big - sword after I dumped the leader because he was so green and Eric decided "to stop him or pop him". The big catch of the trip was the largest shark I have ever seen in person, whether in the wild or in captivity.  It was a hammerhead that was at least eight feet long, and maybe more, with a girth as big as mine, which is saying something.

 Freemanator, above, gave it a go. (His mother will see this picture and blow a gasket, so let me assure my daughter that one of us held the back of his harness the entire time, but for the moment when his father stepped out of frame so I could take this photo.) But this shark was too much for the Freemantor standing up, and I did not have the footboard for the chair on the boat, so Eric had to step in and finish it. After being deep into the backing twice, Eric finally brought this stud shark to the boat, and I took a wrap and held on until he broke the 200 pound leader, which took about five seconds

MEET MABRY CHASE

This past weekend, Bobby Legier invited me to join him and Nate Marks on his boat, the Mabry Chase, named after his daughter.  It is a 45 Gillkin Express very much like the Blind Hog, both handsome, custom built Carolina boats.  We left for the oil rigs Thurday night and returned Saturday from the Spur around Miller Time. It was a great trip, well worth the time, effort and fuel. Below is a photo of the Petronius as we approached it at 0200 Friday to begin live baiting for tuna.

Here is the dividend our diligence paid - another 100 pound yellowfin, this one caught by Nate.

Then we fished for wahoo with high speed lures pulled at thirteen knots at the nearby Beer Can rig, and caught two 'hoos, one about thirty pounds and the other, pictured below with Bobby on the left and Nate on the right, twice thirty.

Our blood lust not yet sated, we ran to the Spur, and swordfished Friday night, catching the ninety or so pounder in the photo below.

And to make up for the recent dearth of posts, a special treat for my readers - a photo of the seldom seen High Hog maneuvering the Mabry Chase with a remote control in the cockpit as a fish is being fought.

The only hiccup in the entire trip was the ride home. Three to five foot seas at least, just forward of the starboard beam for sixty nautical miles. Kinda like being in a washing machine mounted on a roller coaster.  But this minor discomfort did little to mar a memorable adventure.

I will be a better correspondent in the future. Promise.

Houston, We Have A Problem

Sometimes there is more to a fishing trip than fishing, and that was the case during Blind Hog's second outing. The date was Friday, September 21. The crew was your correspondent, the Freemanator and his father, Eric Songer, plus Grasshopper (aka Andrew Dover) from the Outta Here and his roommate, Garrett Simpson. The plan was to depart at dusk, run for an hour or so and then bump along at seven and half knots through the night to meet the rising sun south of the Dumping Grounds about 85 nautical miles out. From there we would troll west toward the Steps and then north and east up the roll down past the Elbow to the Nipple. Which is what we did.  But it tells easier than it was.

First came some culture shock.  The Hog and its predecessors are accustomed to being crewed on overnight trips by older (old?) men, prudent, deliberate men who watched Bonanza on Sunday nights after The Wonderful World of Disney if their parents would let them stay up, men whose testosterone levels now barely exceed those of their wives. Grasshopper and Garrett, on the other hand, are in their early twenties. Both are good company and  excellent fishermen, which is not surprising, given the fact that they are professionals who were just fun fishing with me. But neither is a fancy dresser, a fastidious groomer, or a conscientious nutritionist. I told them to bring whatever they thought they needed for a 24 hour offshore trip, and they climbed aboard with a couple of favorite lures and three cases of beer. As they put away their essentials in every nook and cranny of the boat that would hold ice, I was reminded of the adage that nothing says a man means business like using a shopping cart in a liquor store. And these boys mean business. As you can see below, they look nothing alike, yet somehow both remind me of Bill the Cat. They are the kind of young men that fathers with daughters the world over fear.  I like them very much.

 At first, all went according to plan. At 10:30, we began our two hour watches, Hopper and Garrett were up first, Eric to go on at 2:30, and me at 4:30. I bedded down on the starboard lounge seat on the helm deck for six wonderful hours of uninterrupted sleep, a luxury on these types of trips. I may have been dreaming of dolphins and lions like Santiago in The Old Man and the Sea when I was jolted upright by alarms going off here, there and everywhere. There was no bang, and there was no smoke, but like Apollo 13, something had happened, and we were losing power 60 nm from the house. The bottom machine and the radar would shut down, power up, and shut down again. The autopilot had been knocked off auto.  The radios would not transmit because of a low battery condition.  If the saltwater washdown in the cockpit was used, the power flowing to the washdown pump knocked everything else off line. I turned off all the electronics but the chart plotter and the autopilot, and I turned off all the lights except the running lights. I grabbed a flashlight and began to look around just as if I knew what I was looking for, which I didn't, trying to act like Jim Lovell, but feeling like Chicken Little.

The first thing I notice is that no one is on watch. It is 12:30, yet I am alone on the helm deck, and there is no one in the cockpit.  Two possibilities present themselves to me. Either whoever was on watch  fell overboard, probably while trying to take a leak over the cover board in the cockpit while wearing beer goggles, or my two young crewmen are snuggled up together below. I am unsure which possibility I prefer, and decide not to investigate further at the moment because if one of them has gone over the side it is too late to save him, and if both of them are below it might be too soon to disturb them.  So I crawl around on my hands and knees with my flashlight, checking breakers, reading volt meters,  and turning things on and off in the hopes that I will find something.

And find something I do. I find four bare feet in the beam of my flashlight. Hopper and Garrett have appeared on the helm deck.  They have been in the tower, enjoying the evening air, the star filled sky, and a cold beer or four.  The tower. A third possibility that did not occur to me.

"We turned on the spotlight and shit started happening," Garrett says matter of factly.  Hopper nods in solemn confirmation, a man of many beers and few words.

What had happened was that the house batteries that run the electronics were wired to a 10 amp battery charger, and all the electronics, plus the live well, the helm deck lights and the spreader lights pull close to 40 amps, not to mention the spotlight.  The engines were running just fine, and turning out 13.75 volts each,  but there was no isolator switch that would allow the power from the engine alternators to charge the house batteries in the absence of sufficient juice from the house battery charger.  All these deficiencies have since been remedied, but for the balance of this trip, we minimized the use of power on the helm deck and checked the compass heading for Destin every 30 minutes in case we had to make it home the old fashioned way.  But we pressed on, because Blind Hog don't care..

We did find blue water come morning. And we did find some weed lines and occasional flotsam or jetsam to fish on. But the fish were either somewhere else or uncooperative.  Eric caught a large triple tail on a spinning rod off a floating bucket. We also caught two small mahi, one so small we tossed it back. Later in the day, a billfish, species unknown, knocked down the long right. Almost immediately, the short left went down too. We assumed it was the billfish, so Garrett dropped back a swimming ballyhoo we were running on the left corner.  A wahoo knifed in and cut it off behind the hook.  It was almost certainly the wahoo and not the billfish that knocked down the short left and then came back for the unexpected ballyhoo offering, because the skirt on the lure on the short left was chewed up pretty good and the leader was frayed when we checked it. A little excitement, but no cigar

The high point of this otherwise unremarkable day of fishing was being able to check off another thing on Freemanator's bucket list  He had never caught a wahoo, and now he has, a nice one too. For him, it was a good trip, and I am happy when he is happy, so it was a good trip for me, the cost of subsequent upgrades to the boat notwithstanding.

The bottom line is that we made it home in good order and in good time in the boat we left in, with no one requiring medical attention upon arrival. And we caught fish.  I'll take that every time.

First Foray, First Blood

I write to tell the story of the first fishing trip of the Blind Hog, which took place this past Sunday.  But first, a little background.  Mary and I closed on the Blind Hog on July 26, and it immediately went into the Jarrett Bay Boatworks yard in Beaufort, North Carolina, for survey remediations and upgrades, where it remained for two weeks.  The Jarrett Bay folks are first class craftsmen and nice folks; their considerable skills are matched only by their patience and desire to please their customers. I was very pleased.

Mary and I left Tallahassee on Tuesday, August 14 in a rented mini-van full life jackets, chain, rode, an anchor, charts, fenders, buckets, water hoses, towels, toilet paper, wine, rum, etc.  You get the picture. We arrived around noon on the 15th, and loaded the boat that afternoon.  The next day, the 16th, we sea trialed the boat in the morning and then moved it to the municipal marina in Morehead City. Below is a picture of the Blind Hog at the Jarrett Bay yard just prior to departing to our jumping off point.

At  first light on Friday, August 17, we were off.  I will not recount in this post our adventures during the trip, which were many and varied, and by no means all fun and games.  Suffice it to say, we were eight days on the water, and only  ran aground once before we finally made it to Carrabelle, just 120 nautical miles from Destin.  But there things came unglued for a while. Because of a hurricane followed by the death of my mother, it would be another two weeks before the boat made it to its new home. But, finally, just after noon on Friday, September 7, I backed the Blind Hog into its slip at East Pass Towers Marina in Destin Harbor.

Bringing home the bacon was kinda like my time in the Marine Corps: I am proud of what Mary and I acomplished. And I am glad to have the experience under my belt. But I ain't doing it again.

After another week of preparation and waiting for a weather window, it was time to put the new boat through its paces with hooks in the water.  At dawn last Sunday, the Hog went snorting through East Pass on the hunt for acorns.  The crew on this first foray consisted of me, Mary, the Freemanator, Wayne Lewis, Justin Goff, and Lisa Weber, a fine assemblage, as you can see in the photo below.

We headed for a pocket of blue water reported beyond the Ozark, about 30 nm due south, and we found it. While we were still deploying the outriggers, something ate a ballyhoo on the long center line.  And before you could say "first blood", a nice blackfin tuna was in the boat.  I pause here to note that the angler on this very first fish to be caught on the Blind Hog was my grandson, Freeman McKager Songer, aka the Freemanator, aka the Fishing Fool. This made his Papa very happy.

A half an hour later, there was a big bite on a medium Zacatak Sprocket with a lumo skirt on the short right rigger. Lisa went to the chair and fought this fish with skill and determination for some time until it finally chewed through the 300 pound Momoi Xtra Hard leader.  The leader was so frayed and boogered up that it would not go through the hook stop on the lure, which saved my Sprocket.  Undoubtedly, this was a big wahoo like the one Mary caught in June on the same lure.

Then things got slow. Real slow. So, we picked up and ran to the Spur, another 25 nm to the south, where we started to troll  down into the DeSoto Canyon. Again, slow going, nothing happening, the water not all that blue.  I chatted up a nearby boat that had been fishing the area for two days without any results that  the captain cared to mention.  Bummer. The only encouraging news was that we could see  and hear a boat about three miles to the west that had been fighting a big blue marlin for more than an hour when we arrived.

Wayne and the Freemanator climb into the tower to try and find something for us to fish on.  Nada. The boat is rolling in a three foot beam sea.  The diesel engines are rumbling. It's hot.  Looks like it's going to be a long ......

The long right goes off like a pistol shot.  Rod bowed, line sizzling off the reel against 15 pounds of drag.

"Wayne! Freeman! Fish on! Fish on! Get down here!"

Wayne comes lumbering down the tower ladder at flank speed while Freeman comes down the other side like a fireman sliding down a firehouse pole.

"Clear, clear, clear!  Lisa, get in the chair."

Lisa is in the chair with the rod, a straight butt with a Talica 25 reel spooled with 700 yards of 60 pound test, pumping and reeling. I take the boat out of gear, and begin to bring in the teasers while everyone is clearing the other lines. Even Mary, who is wearing a soft cast on her injured left hand, is in the cockpit.

"Fish, big fish!" she shouts, pointing beyond the transom.  And she is right.  I see color in the water, bearing down on the squid teaser that is almost at the left corner of the boat by now.

"It's a marlin," Wayne calls out.  "Put the boat in gear! Go forward!"

And I do. The boat surges forward, and the  marlin swerves left, suddenly attracted to the bird teaser on the right side, where there is a bent butt Tiagra 50 with a swimming ballyhoo on a circle hook in the corner position.  Justin has been clearing it, and the wind-on is already partially on the reel. That's how close to the boat the bait is.

"Feed him, Justin.  Knock it out of gear," Wayne yells.  Justin throws the drag into free spool, and, just like you draw it up, the marlin grabs the ballyhoo and takes off.  Wait for it...  Wait for it... One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven.

"Lock it up, Justin." Justin pushes the drag forward. The clicker wails against the drag as the line races off the reel .

"Fish on!"

Now we have a double, a mystery fish on a straight butt that Lisa is fighting from the chair, and a marlin on a regular bent butt that has to be fished from the chair. Rather, than switch people, we switch rods.  The Freemanator takes the straight butt and backs into the right forward corner of the cockpit to fight the mystery fish standing up.  Lisa takes the bent butt in the chair and goes back to work. In fairly short order, Wayne is leadering the second fish, a nice white marlin, on the left side of the cockpit.  You can see the ballyhoo still dangling from the circle hook that is improbably imbedded in the roof of his mouth. Wayne and Justin release this fish without difficulty, and away he swims, unharmed. One down.

Now for the mystery fish, which the Freemanator has been battling away from the main action.  Lisa quickly hops out of the chair, and the Fishing Fool climbs in. Here he is, checking his line level as he reels, a budding craftsman being coached by Wayne as his grandmother looks down range for a show of any kind that would reveal the identity of the mystery fish.

Probably not a tuna.  Maybe another big wahoo? Freemanator has most of the line on the reel.  I bump the boat to port to put the fish on the right side of the cockpit, our preferred side. (I wonder why?) Justin gets the gaff and moves into position.  Wayne is ready, still wearing the leadering gloves. Lisa is driving the chair.  Everything is going just as if we know what we're doing.

"Color! I see color. Big fish." Mary calls out.

"It's a marlin," Wayne adds.  Deja vu all over  again. A billfish double. 

Here is the mystery fish, pinned to a Black Bart 1656 Mini Angle with a 9/0 hook in a rainbow skirt.  All my lures that have caught billfish have names.  This is Judy Garland, as in "Somewhere over the rainbow...", and this is her third white marlin. It is the second white and the sixth billfish for the Fishing Fool. He and the Hog are both off to auspicious starts in what hopefully will be long careers in blue water fishing.

Wayne and Justin effect another clean release, and the marlin swims off while we put our wares back in the water and then go looking for more acorns.  And we find one about an hour later.  A white hits Little David, a dorado skirted small Cabo Shaker on the long left.  He knocks it down, but will not eat.  He is just playing, snaking around behind the lure with his tail and dorsal out of the water as we drop the lure back and reel it up trying to provoke him, all to no avail.  Finally, he gets bored and leaves.  

It's not late, but the Freemanator has school in the morning in Tallahassee, so we leave too, arriving back at the dock at around Miller time, where Lisa takes her obligatory dunking as a first time marlin catcher in order to propitiate the billfish gods. 

A truly great day, one that proved the Hog can raise fish and that those who crew him can sometimes catch them.  May many more flags like the ones below fly from his outrigger halyard before his days and my days on the water are done.

ACORNS GALORE

I have been remiss in keeping you informed of my fishing related doings, primarily because there has been so much doing going on.  And the result is big news, at least in the limited context of The Fishing Reports.  

But before the news, the fishing, what little there has been of it. 

GAFF THEM IN THE EYE, SON

On Saturday, June 30, sick of sitting in the slip waiting for the wind to stop blowing, Hammerhead sallied forth with your correspondent,  Eric Songer, the Freemanator, Tenser Mallette, and the grande dame of The Fishing Reports, Miss Mary aka Mama, aboard.  The forecast was 10 to 15 knots out of the SSW, seas 2 to 3 feet, but it had been blowing from that direction at that velocity for days, which means 3, plus some 4s.  No 2s. Rather than banging into a head sea for the 60 nm to the Spur, we decided to head for the Nipple and take our beating just forward of the port beam for only 45 nm and then ride a following sea home at the end of the day. But by the time we neared the Edge, some 20 nm out, it seemed like a better idea to go bottom fishing on the Edge instead of trolling at the Nipple.  

Wussing out was a possibility I had anticipated, so I had bottom rods and a box of cigar minnows on the boat. And not long after we headed for the Edge, we came upon a couple of large weed patches in about 150 feet of water. No mahi, but there was bait.  We broke out the sabiki rigs and started bailing what turned out to be juvenile amberjack.  Now we had dead bait and live bait, and were good to go. 

As we worked the Edge, the action was steady and the catch was a wonderful variety of species providing a consistently high quotient of fun.  We caught a really big Spanish mackerel, a couple of small kings, a shark, several bonito, and a keeper amberjack or two that we couldn't keep because the season was closed.  We also had to throw back 5 keeper gag grouper, as the season on them did not open until the next day. But we did keep a nice scamp and limited out on fat red snapper. 

All this action was an opportunity for Freemanator to practice his gaffing skills.  "Try to hit them well forward," I told him.  "Don't booger up the meat if you can help it." Freeman is a good boy, attentive and obedient.  He gaffed the very next fish to come to the boat right through the eyes. Not much meat damaged there.  "Was that OK, Papa?" he asked with a sly smile that said the gaff shot had been a fortuitous accident to which he would never admit.  "I've seen worse," I replied, as dead pan as I could manage. 

 We also caught one and a half red grouper, which we kept.  I say one and a half because while Mary was reeling in a handsome specimen of the breed, she felt a sharp tug, and voila, a toothy critter had helped itself to everything aft of the pec fins, as you can see below.

It was a good day. A great day, really. The fishing was excellent. The crew was the very heart of the Hammerhead fishing team, every one a member in good standing of the Ancient and Honorable Order of the Blind Hog, and every one at least a Curly Tail in rank.  This was as it should have been, because although we did not know it then, this was the last time we would ever fish on Hammerhead.

'HOO'S YER MAMA?

Between June 30, and last Saturday, August 11, I did not wet a line, on my boat or on anyone else's.  I was too busy, but more about that later.

Last Saturday, Miss Mary and I were the guests of the Mitchell Clan on the Anonymous, a 54 Hatteras. Aboard were the Clan captain - Mark Yanora, the patriarch and matriarch - Pete and Melanie, and their progeny - Drew and Bart.  This was a relatively casual outing, the plan being to wahoo fish at and beyond the Knuckle, about 20 nm south on the way to the Spur.

We left before dawn, and when the day came, it was distinguished by a clear blue sky and calm seas.  The opening spread was two teasers off the riggers, a strip dredge off the left corner, two marlin lures on the short riggers, a skirted ballyhoo down on a planer on the right corner, two skirted ballyhoo on the long lines, a skirted ballyhoo behind a bird on the long center line, and a naked dink ballyhoo fished down the middle at the end of the prop wash off the tip of a rod in a transom rodholder. Bart, like Wayne Lewis, believes you cannot have too many hooks in the water. Drew was basically hors de combat with pain from a bad back, for which his mother gave him a mystery pill that put him face down in the salon for much of the day.  Mark, Pete and Melanie were on the bridge. Bart and I were working the cockpit, and the Clan was kind enough to designate Mary as the angler de jour.

Early on, we had a knockdown on the long right, followed immediately by a knockdown on the center line, both baits crushed. Probably a white marlin picking his way through the spread, front to back. After that, nothing for a long while. 

The morning had almost dwindled away when we had big bite on the center line. Mary grabs the rod, one of my Talicas, and goes to work.  The fish makes a couple of good runs against 15 pounds of drag, but Mary is up to the challenge.  Before long almost all the line is on the reel.  The rod is bowed, the line tight, and the pressure constant as the knot on the double line comes out of the water just behind the boat. The the rod tip pops up. The fish is gone. Pulled the hook. It was a fast bastard with no quit that never jumped. Probably a wahoo. 

This was disappointing, but not devastating. It was still relatively early.  But later it wasn't early anymore. And, even later, it began to get late.  By now we were running all lures, and trolling faster to cover more ground. Were we going to be skunked?

Bart is in the salon,  and Mary and I are in the cockpit facing each other, talking with our backs to the rods, when Melanie politely calls down from the bridge, "I believe there is a fish on the long right." And sure enough, the long right is down, and line is ripping off the reel.  That is the only disadvantage of my light, tough Talicas: they might as well not have clickers for all the noise they don't make.

Again, Mary is on the rod, standing up without a harness, only a fighting belt.  Bart and I are clearing, and Drew appears and pitches in, back pain notwithstanding. The fish makes a long opening run.  Mary works it close t0 the boat.  He makes another long run, but not quite so far this time.  Will this one pull the hook too?  "Honey, the longer he is in the water, the more likely we are to lose him," I say to Mary, who gives me the stink eye as she leans back on the rod, pumping and reeling, sweat pouring down her face. Dumb ass thing to say. Bart gives me a well deserved you're-a-moron look.

We see color. Mary backs into the right corner. It's a wahoo, a nice one.  Mark bumps the boat ahead. Bart takes the leader and straightens the fish out. I lean over with the gaff. Be patient. Get it right. Don't miss. "Will you stick him, for God's sake," Bart pleads. And I do, but too far back, well behind the pec fins. Gaff him in the eye, stupid. As I lift him out of the water, he gets bigger. And bigger.  A 50 to 60 pound 'hoo. In da box.

 Zeros to heroes in 15 minutes. The day is made. It's OK to go home now.

That was Saturday.  On Wednesday, Hammerhead left its slip with a stranger at the helm, never to return.

"EVEN A BLIND HOG FINDS AN ACORN EVERY ONCE IN A WHILE."

A traditional Southern saying used to explain an unusually good performance from an
unexpected source. Urban Dictionary

For two years, Mary and I have been toying with the idea of buying another boat, a newer boat that might last me to the end of my active days at the helm of a sport fishing boat 100 nm offshore.  Something with more speed, more range, and a better, drier ride. Our search varied in intensity from desultory to desperate.  We looked at boats in Destin, Tampa, Orange Beach, Stuart, Ft. Pierce, and Ft. Myers twice.  We made offers on at least three boats and had contracts on two. But it just never worked out.  Wrong boat. Wrong time. Wrong price. And then there was Hammerhead.  I wanted a new boat, but I didn't want two boats, having accidentally owned two condos for four years, an experience I did not care to repeat.

But in early July, I saw a custom built Carolina boat on line that was for sale in Morehead City, North Carolina, and I fell in love.  Mary, Freeman, and I drove up to look at it, twenty two hours round trip.  I made an offer that was accepted.  Freeman, Marcus, and I drove up a week later for the sea trial and survey, twenty two hours round trip.  Damn the two boat problem; full speed ahead. We bought the boat.  Just like that.

Our new boat is a sea foam green 2008 43 Express with only 180 hours on 660 hp Cummins QSM 11s, a well equipped, well maintained, all but new boat at a used boat price.  Fast, fuel efficient, and a head turner to boot - tumble home aft, broken sheer, Carolina flare, and plenty of attitude. A small miracle.  

But that's not all. I do not know if miracles come in threes, but they definitely come in pairs. A broker in South Florida who I met when he lived in Destin knew a woman named Roxanna Collins in Ft. Lauderdale who was looking for a boat just like Hammerhead and was willing to pay a price I could stomach if not be wildly enthusiastic about. She and her intended, Tony, drove up to see Hammerhead, eighteen hours round trip. They liked it, and she bought the boat. Just like that.

After seven and a half years of distinguished service, Hammerhead is gone, my friends. Sic transit in gloria mundi.

Mais si le roi est mort, vive le roi! Mary and I leave on Tuesday for Morehead City to bring the new boat home.  With a one day lay off to rest in the middle of the trip, I expect it to take nine days, weather permitting and insha'Allah.  I will send email bulletins on our progress, and those of you who are interested can follow us on Google Maps through the Spot link I will provide.

Here is the new flagship of the Ancient and Honorable Order of the Blind Hog, the latest - and probably the last - Shoat Boat. 

But what to name it?

Oh, come on. Blind Hog, of course.

And here is the new logo. It's on the transom with the name, and it will be on the tee shirt I will give you after we go fishing together.

Now all Mary and I have to do is get the Blind Hog home safely. May The Force be with us.