AFW

By Jason
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Tuesday, April 3, 2007
"Best Day Ever!"
"4/3/07 Lots Of Hungry Spanish Mackerels Near FMB"

Today Karla's brother Carlos, Sr. & some of her other relatives who are visiting from out-of-town decided to go down to Bonita Springs to do some shopping (uh, gee, fun!  Wish I could be there!).  After looking at the conditions (red tide status, weather, tides), it was decided that today would be optimal to go fishing!

We left land about 3:30pm with 5 souls on board: Karla, Amber, Carlos Medium, Josh & myself.  You may remember Josh as he was introduced on our outing August 11th of last year.  We had 2 dozen shrimp & a half dozen or so misc. bait fish caught late last week in Bonita Springs.  Intentions were to head to the "shark zone".  However, we quickly found ourselves in route to an area off of FMB that we have fished successfully at in the past.

Good thing we did!  Check this out: We were catching Spanish Mackerels left and right....faster than we could keep up with.  Most of the time we had 4 lines in and at any time there were 1-2 hookups in progress!

CLICK ON THE PICS for full size ones. 4:48pm Karla with her first of many Mack.

CLICK ON THE PICS for full size ones. 4:51pm Josh with his first of many Mack.

The boat got bloody after a while and everyone was having a blast.

After a while the Macks calmed down then these fish started up.  We found out that they are Blue Runners:

CLICK ON THE PICS for full size ones. 5:39pm Karla with her Blue Runner.

CLICK ON THE PICS for full size ones. 5:40pm Carlos Medium with his Blue Runner.

We ran out of bait and used some cut Spanish Mack sometimes, and those fake fish you get at Walmart in the ziplock bag.  The Spanish Macks were hitting the fake fish like crazy.

While we were fishing we were a little startled by what we saw emerging from about 50 yards from the boat:

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7:04pm

A large turtle!  He heard all of the commotion on the boat and decided to go back down, never to be seen again.  Amber tells me that turtles can stay underwater holding their breath for up to an hour.

And of course, a sunset shot:

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7:43pm

As I was snapping about a dozen shots of the sunset, I attempted to get a shot very close to the surface of the water.  Just then a wave came up and soaked my camera.  Buttons on the camera stopped working.  Back on land I washed the camera with hot water and placed it in front of a fan all night.  Not to worry, the camera works 100% again.

We arrived on land about 9:30pm.  In all we got 15 Spanish Macks, 3 Blue Runners, and 1 "Lizard Fish" (not shown).  The Lizard fish was caught by Carlos Medium.  Amber was baitmaster for the trip and she did great!  

CLICK ON THE PICS for full size ones.	CLICK ON THE PICS for full size ones.
CLICK ON THE PICS for full size ones. "Inventory"

All Macks measured 17.5 - 19 inches.          What an amazing day!

• Biggest Fish By Length Caught By:      Karla

• Total Number Of Fish Caught:              19

• Distance Traveled:                                  28mi

• Time On The Water:                                6h

• Water Temperature:                                78-79 F

• Seas:                                                         beat-us-to-heck-rough in late afternoon, glass in evening

• Wind:                                                         mildly windy late afternoon, calm in evening

• Precipitation:                                            none

Update 4/4/07 Wednesday
Dinner tonight was great!  The Spanish Mackerel was not bloody as I was told it would be since we did not bleed the fish at the time of catching, nor was it that terribly fishy tasting, nor was it oily!

Update 4/7/07 Saturday
Here are the remaining 2 SMs and 1 trout that I caught in March cooking.  Um umm good:

 
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