“Heaven and Hell” Thursday afternoon 4 pm the boarding gate opened and here came the anglers. Now by 5 pm everyone was checked in and loaded up and gave me the opportunity to leave an hour early. So we dropped lines and headed out the pass. As usual we cleared the pass and went down for safety orientation, questions and answers, and to discuss what my plans were to catch some fish. After last weeks “ COBIA FEST “ I was itching to stop on my way to pulley ridge and see if they were still there since they are a migratory species. I told everyone it’s going to be a 1 hr stop. Dinner was served and it was delicious blackened Cobia. Now it’s Midnight we pulled up to the spot. Well we’re they there ???? YES they were. Quick pit stop to catch 10 cobia 30-50 lb range. Now off to pulley. Fast forward to 7:30 am … 138 miles SW of Marco Island The deep dropping started. Yellow eyes , hambones , queens, snowy grouper , yellow edge grouper, golden tiles , and Alfonsino’s. Flat calm ocean and the fish were biting. 6:30 pm sunset rolled around, filet minion dinner ready to be served and we were headed to the top of the ridge to see how the night would treat us. The ocean was flat but the fog rolled in and it was heavy. Visibility was less then100 yards. It was a steady pick of muttons , hambones , and black-fin tunas. Now being this was a pulley/Howell hook combo trip we had a 50 mile run to make to get up to the grounds for the second day of deep dropping. About 30 miles into it I ran over an area of new bottom that looked interesting. So after some zigzagging around I was ready to try it out. Now we had a really good catch so I was comfortable exploring around for a bit. From 7:45 am till 2:30 pm it was an amazing bite. Giant queens, yellow edge grouper , snowy grouper, and blue-line tiles. 6-1/2 hours , 24 anglers , filled up 3500 lbs of fish box space to give us a total of roughly 6500-6800 lbs of fish. Now this entire trip we were just waiting for the winds to show up.3:15 pm it started and it was fierce 25kts from the North. With 4 hrs left to fish and 159 miles from home it was time to call it quits. Pointed her to the North east we were off to the races with a quickly building sea. Definitely a night of hell for us on the bridge steaming through a steady 10-12ft sea with some bigger mixed in.4 am rolled around and we were at the passReady to get this big girl tied to the dock.Being that we were in early we didn’t wake anyone till 7 am where they had a simple breakfast and the offload of fish began.This trip was definitely a good one and well worth the bumpy ride home. I hope you enjoyed the read.Sincerely,Capt. RalphAmerican Patriot Fishing setting the “NEW”standard in long range fishing.
