The guys I grew up and am still friends with are all avid anglers. As far back as junior high school, we used to skip class and go fishing. We’d load our gear on the
back of our bikes and spend the day at our favorite spots around South Miami.
We’d be sure to cover up with hats and sunscreen so as not to come home with
telltale tans that would get us caught and grounded.

A couple of years ago one of these same buddies told me had never landed a sailfish. We decided to take a day off and remedy this “immediately if not sooner”
(an expression we commonly use as a joke). We woke up early, got our gear
together and headed out. It was a nice day with just the type of peaked chop
that sailfish commonly feed in. This gives them the advantage of being able to
sneak up, cut across the wave crests and crash into their prey. We stopped at a
spot we knew and were able to use chum and Sabiki rigs (six tiny lures in a
row) and procure an assortment of great baits. In this case, we caught big
pilchards, cigar minnows and a few goggle-eyes.

The way we fish is for sailfish is relatively simple. We stop the boat between 80 and
160 feet of water, shut the engine down, turn sideways and put out a sea
anchor. This is a large canvas sock tied off to the bow which catches the water
and slows the boat’s drift speed. The breeze was out of the east, which would blow us from deep to shallow, so we put out our sea anchor and began our drift in about 160 feet of water.

Our spread consisted of two baits on the surface, one mid-water and two near the
bottom. We took our places near our rods and started our vigil. We didn’t have
to wait long before the surface line nearest me popped off of the copper wire.
When sail-fishing, it’s necessary to leave the bail open and the line held in
place with a piece of wire. This referred to as “putting it in the
copper”. It allows the fish to approach the bait, swat it with its bill,
grab it and eat it while still on the hook. Otherwise the fish will knock your
bait off of the hook and eat it, but you will miss your shot at catching it.

I closed the bail, came tight on the fish and off it ran. It did not jump at all, but
sounded and began circling the boat. That is typical behavior of a tuna. True
to form, it was a black fin tuna in the ten pound range. Not the billfish we
were shooting for, but great table fare none the less. I cut a small slit just
behind the gills and ‘bled it’ over the side of the boat. This is done with
tunas because they are very bloody fish and to remove some of the lactic acid
that has built up in the meat during the fight. Lactic acid degrades the
quality of the meat. I washed it off and put it deep into the ice in the
cooler. We were glad to have some dinner in the boat.

I re-baited the hook, casted it back out and waited for our next opportunity. A
few minutes later, the line on the top water rod nearest to my buddy popped off
of the copper and began ripping off of the reel. He gave it a few seconds to
run, closed the bail and came tight on the line. It started screaming line off
of the reel like a rocket. This was followed by a huge explosion and splash as
a beautiful sailfish broke the surface repeatedly.

We were stoked, but focused on making the “hook up” turn into a
“catch”. In the fishing world, that is achieved by physically
touching the heavier line near the hook known as the leader. The best way to
“catch” a big fish on a spinning rod is to put the angler on the bow
of the boat and slowly follow the fish with the engine in gear. This avoids
having too much line taken off of the spool. It’s also better for the fish, as
it shortens the fight, thereby reducing the stress on it. I ran around the boat
and reeled in all of our baits, pulled the sea anchor, started the engine and
began the pursuit.

The sailfish was average sized for the Atlantic species, but it fought like a
champion. It made several runs, cuts, turns and some more spectacular jumps. I
followed the fish with the boat, putting it in and out of gear as the situation
warranted. My buddy had the angling experience to play it perfectly and after
about 20 minutes or so, he had the fish alongside the boat.

A couple of high fives and photos later we began the task of reviving the sailfish.
This is done by holding the fish in the water by the base of the bill and idling
forward slowly. By moving the fish forward through the water, you increase the
oxygen going into the gills. After a few minutes, the fish will begin moving,
wagging its tail and biting on your hand as you hold it. This is when you know its
okay to release the fish.

Unfortunately in this case, the fish was not responding like it should have. After taking turns holding the bill and driving the boat for quite some time, we realized
that the sailfish was in real trouble. Passionate anglers learn to respect the
fish that they catch, especially ones who put up a great fight. That combined
with the fact that this was my friend’s first billfish, made him decide to take
more extreme measures. He found a dive mask, grabbed the fish by the bill and
jumped overboard with it.

We idled along while my friend held onto the sail’s bill with one hand and the bow-rail of my boat with the other. As we cruised along I noticed that according the
gps, we were coming back into the area where we had landed the tuna in about
160 feet of water. I was thinking that it was good because we would be able to
start our next drift from this spot again. Other implications didn’t cross my
mind at the time.

Suddenly my friend, who is one of the most fearless guys I’ve ever known, let out a yell and began walking on the water in an attempt to get into the boat. The trouble
was that he refused to let go of the fish in the process. He was stuck flailing
on the bow-rail, half in and half out of the water. He was screaming, “Get
us in the boat!!! Get us in the boat!!!” He was holding onto that sailfish
as if it was his first born.

It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out what was causing my friend distress. I looked down and could see the tail of the fish dangling between his flailing feet and a huge dark shape directly underneath. Instead of trying to get them both out awkwardly, I grabbed the sailfish by the bill, leaned back and fell back into the boat with it on top of me. My friend came flying in over the side and we found ourselves in a tangled mess on the bow of the boat.

“Shark! Shark! A big f*#@ing bull shark!” he gasped. “That thing was HUGE! I can’t believe you pulled the fish in and not me!” I just shook my head and said, “It
wanted the sailfish! I thought I’d just take it out of the equation. Did you
consider just giving it to him?” His response was, “No way man!”

He told me that while he was in the water with the fish, he felt like something was watching him. He looked down to see a ten foot, 500 pound bull shark coming right for him. It was agitated and ‘lit up’ with its pectorals and dorsal fin pointing straight out in an attack posture. There’s no way to know how long the shark had been watching the action and following the sailfish. Possibly it had been in the area since we bled the tuna. The blood in the water probably hadn’t helped the situation one way or another.

As we feared, the sailfish did not survive the ordeal. We were really bummed out, but we figured that since it did die, we’d at least make use of it. We ended up taking it home and having the meat smoked. It came out excellent and we had plenty to share with friends and family. Not what we wanted, but at least the fish did not go to waste.

After the ordeal, we cleaned up the boat, got ourselves together and put out more lines. We wound up having a stellar day. We caught two more nice tuna, a big kingfish and a sizable mutton snapper. On our final drift we caught another sailfish. This one was released happy and healthy to fight another day.

Another sailfish, shark and story...

While fishing the edge of the reef with friends and family I had quite an interesting situation occur. We were easing along in about 120 feet of water looking to do some fishing. It was a perfect morning. The winds were light, there wasn’t a cloud in the sky and the water was a perfect aqua blue color. There was a steady current and it was obvious from the conditions that the Gulf Stream was in close to the edge.

I was looking at the depth finder trying to find some holding mutton snapper to drop some deep jigs (heavy lead feathers) with fresh ballyhoo plugs down to. Spring is a good time to target mutton snapper.  I love fishing for them because they pull hard, they are gorgeous fish to boat and photograph, and they make for some tasty dinner. 

Suddenly my Garmin depth finder showed that we were in 2 feet of water. It wasn’t just a momentarily blip, but it actually showed hard, steady bottom two feet underneath us. I get as frustrated as anyone when my electronics (especially new and well-maintained equipment) act up. I gave it the old fix-all side slap. Nothing changed. I turned it off and then on again. The screen came up and I waited for it to begin scrolling. There it was  holding steady at two feet again.  Now I was simply frustrated. I knew for a fact that we were  in over a hundred feet of water!

I exhaled loudly, stepped away from the screen and gazed overboard. Suddenly I saw that we were about to run aground! “What the hell is going on?” I exclaimed. “How can we be so shallow?” I asked to no one in particular. Everyone onboard peered down to see what on earth I could possibly be talking about.

Suddenly the “ground” started easing out from under us and it was covered in spots! It was a thirty-foot whale shark! It was an amazing sight to behold. It was longer and wider than the boat, and breathtakingly beautiful. It came up next to us, stuck its face up out the water and just hovered there.

My sister grabbed my camera and started snapping pictures while we watched this amazing creature to see what it was going to do next. She asked, “Are those sharks down there under it?” My friend Gainey, who is an experienced angler, grabbed a mask and stuck his head over the side into the water to take a closer look at what my sister had seen.

“Those are cobia!” he exclaimed.  Cobia are a highly sought after sport fish. They do indeed look like sharks. ”There are two of them. They must go sixty or seventy pounds!” he exclaimed as he shook the water out of his ears and threw down the mask. He began busying himself with rigging a rod that could handle those massive fish.

Meanwhile the whale shark had come behind my boat and began to scratch its head and back on the skeg and propeller of my outboard engine. (I had taken the boat out of gear) It was rubbing itself so thoroughly that my vessel was lifting up in the water and side-to-side a bit.  At this point I was totally enamored by this amazing creature and flabbergasted by it’s behavior.

I was in the back of the boat as close to the whale shark as I could get. I reached down and began to pet and scratch the big fish on its head. It seemed to be as intrigued by me as I was by it. It abandoned my engine and popped its head up behind the boat like a pet dog seeking its master’s affection. It stared right into my eyes as I pet and scratched its head. My sister took my camera, which was waterproof, stuck it in the water and began trying to take underwater shots of our new friend.

Gainey began pitching a deep jig with a whole fresh ballyhoo attached to the swimming cobia.  I love cobia. They are another one of my favorite fish to catch. I have to admit that I was much more interested in the whale shark and enjoying our ‘moment’ with it than in fishing in that instance. The cobia pursued the jig halfheartedly and one even nipped the back of the ballyhoo, but it was pretty clear that they were more concerned with following their host whale shark than eating our lure and bait.

Finally the whale shark began flicking its tail and started easing away from us. We followed for a bit while Gainey took a few more casts at the cobia. The beautiful creature began lazily swimming down into the depths. Deeper and deeper it dropped. It showed clearly on my ‘functioning’ depth finder (We were in 130 feet of water) for a while until finally it swam out of range.  

It was an amazing experience that none of us are ever going to forget. We lamented not hooking the cobia of course, but we were far from disappointed. It was another great day of many. Another “fix” for our mutual addictions to the ocean, fishing and getting out on the water. 

 If you look closely near the center of the bottom photo you can see one the cobia following the whale shark.

The tail belonged to a massive tarpon that was cruising slowly up into the bight foraging for food along the way. We were poling to cast for redfish so my anglers had light rods and reels with 15# test braid, 30# fluorocarbon leaders and shallow running lures. As we eased closer, we saw that the top tail fin was almost a foot long! It was a monster of a fish!  It was translucent silver and it flashed in the bright sun as it flicked back and forth as it hunted nose down along on the bottom.

Our hearts were pounding in our chests as it got closer and closer and we eased into casting range. Tony and Hernan began taking casts and running their baits in front of this gorgeous creature trying to entice it to bite. They made several beautiful casts at the fish, but it either didn’t notice the lures in the dirty water or wasn’t interested. The fish was moving into the wind and it was slowly out pacing us as I pushed us along in the shallow mud bottom. It was just about out of casting range and now and directly up wind of us.

“This is your last shot!” I whispered, as Hernan took one final cast at the departing fish. The cast was perfectly placed. Landing just in front of the fish and trailing right in front of its face. The water ERUPTED with an explosion of water as the massive fish slammed the lure and took off with a crash towards the mouth of the bight. It began greyhounding in the shallow water at a tremendous speed. I didn’t think we had a prayer of catching this fish as it smoked the drag and dumped line from the small reel!

We had to give it a shot though! I lowered the engine so the prop was barely in the water and fired it up. “Hold on!” I yelled and I eased it in to gear. We started moving forward in pursuit of the fish while Hernan held on for dear life. At this point there were only a few precious feet of backing left on the spool!

We couldn’t go very fast at all because the water was so shallow and the engine was trimmed up so high, but we were beginning to move at a slow but steady clip in pursuit of the fish. We chased it as it began making its way across the shallow bight. We’d gain line for a while and then the frantic tarpon would take off again till the silver at the end of the spool showed several times.

After about a half hour (which seemed like a lifetime) we started getting a bit more line back and we got into a bit of a rhythm with the fish. Suddenly it changed tactics and shot directly towards the boat. I knew we were in trouble because in that shallow and muddy bottom we had almost no maneuverability. The fish bulleted behind the boat and took the line under the engine. With a loud “Pop” sound that every fisherman dreads, the line broke. We were heart-broken!

At this point we needed a break from the intensity of hunting the shallows, so I decided to take us over to a nice productive bay to do some drift fishing for trout. I put out my sea anchor, turned the wheel and we began drifting. We started casting leaded jig heads hooked with Gulp shrimp tails and popping them off the bottom. We casted the jigs and relaxed in the boat as we talked and lamented the one that got away.

The trout, ladyfish and jack bite was steady and fun. I was hoping to catch a couple of ladyfish that were small enough to use for live bait at our next spot. Hernan hooked into a nice little ladyfish about ten inches long and it jumped and somersaulted on the starboard side of the boat as he reeled it in. “That’s a perfect bait size!” I said. “Try to get in into the boat before it gets off.” The three of us were watching as the ladyfish leaped frantically out of the water near the transom of the boat.

From behind and under it came a monster hundred pound tarpon! It launched itself into the air in pursuit of the ladyfish. It smashed it with the force of a freight train! The ladyfish flew twenty feet up and over the boat! The tarpon however, was hooked! I screamed “Take it to the front of the boat!” as I started the boat and ran forward to yank the sea anchor out of the water. I could hear the line screaming from the reel and I could see that Hernan was already down well into the backing on the spool.

I hooked a sharp right and followed the fish at a steady clip. It was leaping and crashing and ripping line furiously from the reel. The shallow water that had cost us the last big fish did not hamper us this time as the depth was about four feet. We wanted that fish! Left and right and forward I motored after that tarpon. I could hear Tony’s expensive looking Leica camera clicking as he photographed the fight. He was concentrating on trying to get pictures of the fish while it was airborne.

Hernan was focused on reeling and trying to gain as much line as he could. We would gain on the fish for a while and then watch in frustration as it ripped all the line he had gained out of the reel again. Finally, after about an hour (and about four miles) of chasing the fish, we had it by the leader and boat-side. We released the tarpon to fight another day.  Hernan was exhausted, but elated. Tony claimed to have gotten some beautiful pictures. I was happy for my anglers and thrilled at the chance to have gotten a little bit of redemption. We had been totally out-classed by that beautiful tarpon, but we refused to be beaten.

Check out this video of the shallow water tarpon fight:

Tarpon in Shallow Water That Got Away

On some days it holds fish and can be very productive. I pitched a live pilchard next to it and handed the rod to Eugene. He hooked a goliath grouper immediately. It pulled like a freight train and despite his best efforts, the fish got into the wreck.

We could feel it struggling on the end of the line, so I knew it was still hooked and had not broken off. I wanted that fish! I told Eugene to hold the line firmly, but not too tightly. Luckily it was a calm windless day so we stayed over the wreck and fish. I took off my sunglasses, shirt, shoes and hat. Gordy and Eugene looked at me as if I had lost my mind!

I said “I’m gonna at least TRY to get this fish.” I put on a mask and gloves and eased myself into the water. The water was crystal clear. (If it had been the least bit murky, I’d have never gone in it. Flamingo is loaded with big bull sharks)  I swam down to the wreck and I creeped up on it. The line was going right to one of the big airplane engines.

I peered into a space underneath it and did not see the grouper. I looked around the other side and there it was! It had gotten the leader wrapped around the propeller. It was all lit up and its colors were radiant. That’s a sign that a fish is agitated or angry. This occurs with many species of fish and anglers often call it “striped up”. I snuck around the backside of the big engine and grabbed the grouper by its bottom lip. It stared shaking and flapping violently. It was all I could do to hold on. I bear hugged him, pushed off of the bottom with my feet, snapped the leader and brought it up to the surface.

When I put my head out of the water, Eugene said, “Oh man, that’s too bad! It got off!” What a kick they got when I held up the grouper! Both of them were hooting and hollering and exclaiming that they had never seen anything like it. They couldn’t wait to tell the story to their friends back at the resort where they were staying !

The fish was released unharmed after some good photos. When I took off my gloves, I saw that the grouper had left me a little parting gift to remember it by. Its teeth had penetrated my right glove and chomped my thumb. I’d have to say that I think it was worth it.

See more grouper wrasslin pictures.

I quietly poled a few strokes toward the fish and whispered “11 o’clock at 25 feet” The angler on the port side of the boat laid a perfect cast a few feet in front of the cruising fish with a Gambler Flappin’ Shad. The snook slammed the bait and the fight was on. The fish took a screaming run parallel to the shore. In between runs my client would gain line, only to have it peel more out.

“Keep it out of the trees!” I said. Seconds later, the fish took the line around some mangrove roots and shot along the bank. Now the snook was hooked on the rod and the trees and struggling up near the bank. The angler was from Atlanta and had never even seen, let alone caught a snook in his life.

I laid my push pole on the deck and jumped over board. The water was about waist high, but thankfully the bottom was firm. The angler handed me the rod and I began wading towards the bank and the struggling fish. I reeled as I waded toward the trees. As I approached, the fish took more line and shot behind more roots farther up the bank.

When I got to the mangroves I realized I was never going to unwind the line from all of those roots. I had to act. I kept tension on the line and wedged the rod in the mangrove branches with the rod tip facing the fish. Then I made a mad wading dash towards the fish, which was about 20 feet from me.

When I got to the fish, I made a lunging grab for its bottom lip. I lucked out and got it on the first try. It went crazy! It was splashing a jerking around like mad. I could hardly keep a hold of it.  I unhooked the fish, left the rod in the trees and started towards the boat. I waded back  to the cheers and celebrations of my anglers.

I handed the snook up for pictures and went back for the rod. (If you look in the far away picture of me with the fish you can see the rod wedged up in the tree on the right of me) I grabbed it out of the tree, untangled it and headed back to the boat. My anglers were ecstatic and excited to go home and tell the story.