Grove Slam - Miami Mahi (or not)

[BahamaLure]

Unfortunately this is more of just a report than a fishing report but anyway here goes.

Thursday night was the Captain's meeting and Luau where we were off to a good start to the business at hand-




and things went down hill from there- the rest is unpublishable.....


last event of the night was the Rules presentation, probably the best I have ever seen. The rules were clearly printed all over this easy to look at sign board, front and back. You never saw so many drunk dudes pay so close attention at a rules meeting! The questions afterward took a long time, seems there was much confusion over the simple things like "Time of Lines in" and where the boundaries were, poor girl had to be spun around several times until it all sank in.


Kahi it was good to meet you, maybe you can chime in with how you guys did, I was sorry to miss you at the weigh in.


So we decided to 'pre-fish' on the Friday and see if we could locate the schools we went for live bait all morning, taking in the Miami sky line at dawn on the way to Gov't cut.


Then we trolled the full spread from GC all the way up to Port Everglades, heres a video link for the lures spread, maybe an admin can embed it for me


The fishing was bad to say the least, we had one blow up on the big Coggins lure, could have been a king or a wahoo but he didnt stick, the only actual catch was this micro-tuna on my new Humboldt squid pattern (more to appear later on that). He must have wanted it bad though, he hit a 9" lure on 300# leader!


we had company from this guy and followed him for about an hour but still nothing


and so we gave up and went back in looking for more live bait, anchored up at a channel marker and filled the tank with pinfish while Gloria Estefan cruised by in her wee boat


Back at the dock the tuna was demolished


Saturday rolls around, its a 7am Bimini start which proved to be the most exciting part of the day, here's some shots of us all in the milling area. 131 boats all crazy to run-





Then someone yelled "GO" over the vhf and it was on!






We ran all the way the heck down 80 miles south through the mangroves



to Islamorada and off out to the humps trying to make our own luck, we heard there were supposed to have been fish down south but to no avail, not a darn thing all day on the troll. I even faced a mutiny in the end and half my spread was replaced by (ugh) pre-rigged bally-hoo in a last ditch effort to get a hit. Well that didnt work either (thank goodness) so we went back to the humps to at least try for a tuna on the drop, here's a nice bump we found-


and right away we hooked up with a pinfish at about 200ft


but we were to be denied even that! Jeeze, we could not even land a trash fish!


So that ended that, we ran back late and took our time. All told it was a bunch of fun but some of the worst fishing I have ever seen in a tournament. 62# of fish took $10,000 first place, pitiful. All that there was to do was wash the boat, rigs and lures ready to go next time.

[Agitated88]

Now that was one sweet, non-productive, thread, complete with some awesome pictures. The wrap on your boat is awesome...and that SeaVee...daaaammmmnnn Oh yea, lures looked awesome as well!!!

[N2theBlue]

that 39 SeaVee is the shiznit....even though I prefer the IPS version those 4 motors hanging off the back are badazz

[BahamaLure]

thank you Agitated88, fixed the video links.

there were several 4 engine rigs there, probably 4 SeaVees and the big Hydra Sports you see in the photos as well. The HS has room for 6 men inside the center console enclosure all in bolsters and under cover.

We were running 45 knots in the second video and were getting passed like were were looking for parking. There was also a 4x350 hp rig by Deep Impact boats.

[Agitated88]

thank you Agitated88, fixed the video links.

there were several 4 engine rigs there, probably 4 SeaVees and the big Hydra Sports you see in the photos as well. The HS has room for 6 men inside the center console enclosure all in bolsters and under cover.

Anytime...

[clt_capt]

Sorry about the tournament - It looks like your Mahi picked this week to migrate to the Carolinas

[Wireman]

Alan, your boat was trolling next to us for a while that day off Islamorada. I was on a 37' Intrepid with a tower and tripple Yamahas. Didn't realize you were on board or I would have gave you a shout. It was pretty slow for us overall as well, but we didn't have the tournament pressure weighing on us. Nice looking lures!