The next morning we spent some time fishing another old, familiar location and Elijah caught his lifer porkfish.  Then it was time to load up the boat.

We tried fishing some patch reefs, but the conditions were just too rough for us to stay all day.  We spent the second half of the day fishing in Florida Bay.  Elijah put on a good show landing a few Spanish mackerel, but Bartek and I couldn’t replicate his surgical techniques.  I did get revenge on a species that had been avoiding me for much too long…

Southern puffer

The next day we tried motoring out to the patch reefs again, but in the pounding waves our anchor mount broke.  Luckily, Ken spotted our falling anchor and was able to grab the line before it was completely lost.  With some team work in the roller coaster-like waves and many zip ties, we had the anchor secured once again.  Red Green would be proud.

On the reefs, I had a strong fish dig me into some rocks and Ken caught a terrific red grouper.  I really need to pay more attention when fishing reefs, one cannot afford the fish any line else it will find rocks.  Then we headed back into Florida bay.

We fished from spot to spot and eventually stopped on a hump that had attracted some barracuda.  As I cast around the area, I got really lucky as a lone cero mackerel followed my Gotcha plug right to the boat and smoked it in front of my eyes.

Cero mackerel

There was a school of ballyhoo using the boat as cover, but I wasn’t able to catch one before it was time to go.  I’ll find another eventually!

Somehow, even after trying to pack light for this trip we still ended up with horrifying scenes such as this one.  “Oh I forgot something” usually involved taking everyone out in order to fit it back in again…

That evening we fished a bit at our usual bridge spot.  As the sun fell, we began to make our way over to Miami.  We had a pier to fish the next morning.