Now that you have seen I am mostly a saltwater fisherman, and I do not talk about fishing in freshwater that much simpy because I do not prefer to. But a couple of days ago I took a trip up to Georgia to visit my cousin, and he has a decent amount of land that he owns along with a nice house. He also has access to some pretty cool rivers that are on his property also, he is alot like me especially when it comes to fishing, but he knows more than I do about freshwater fishing, especially when it comes to catching bass. And when I say bass he for sure knows exactly how to land a largemouth bass day in and day out, yes I must admit he has a handful of bass fishing tips, and with his tips we were able to make a good day of fishing out of it.

Now we did not have a boat or anything but my cousin new of a good spot to where we can post up and land some fish in. He has fished there for many years and the years have been kind to him by trial and error, what we used to fish for the bass were two different set ups. He had a light rod and was using a spincaster bait as a lure to catch the bass. I was using a fly rod, with a nice looking fly that would look a bass in the face and scream “eat me”!. Within the first hour we were hooking into some fish, we caught a couple small steelhead along with a small catfish, no bass yet though. Until then it finally snuck up on us, my cousin had hooked up with a largemouth.

The lure he was using was working alot better than the fly I was using on my fly rod, I am not a good fly fisherman that is probalbly why I didnt land the largemouth bass and he did. Anyways it was a fun experience trying out this freshwater fishing thing, I have only done it enough times that I could count all of them on one hand, I still prefer to fish in saltwater though. But it is great to try new things, especially bass fishing and the next time that I do go bass fishing hopefully I will get the chance to hook up with one, a big one, mainly for bragging rights and of course so i can get my picture taken with one..

When I was younger, probably about 10 years ago I remember that my uncle had a place down in the everglades that we would always go fishing at. It wasnt a big place, it was a normal sized trailer, and he kept a lot of fishing rods there and there was also alot of tackle in the trailer too, seeing that we would go down there fishing almost every weekend, I think I was about 15 years old. He had a small carolina skiff boat that we would take out and fish the mangroves, and the hundreds of islands that made up the saltwater part of the everglades.

There were lots of fish to be caught there, we were mainly after snook and redfish, and the occasional trout if we could get them to bite, the snook was the prize fish though, in my opinion they are the best tasting fish that you can eat, that is why the fishing regulations that are on them are so strict. We would use medium sized fishing rods, and my dad would usually go with us fishing there also, we would use a popper, or as some saltwater fishermen would call them corks. What you do is you let the cork sit in the water, and you pop it every 30 to 45 seconds, unless you are very close the mangroves, this is where the snook and the redfish love to hang out. Once you see the popper go under water, that is when you set the hook,  I will usually  count for about 2 seconds though to make sure that the fish has taken the bait completely, once you get the hang of it the landing percentage of the fish you will catch will rise dramatically.

I had caught my first hammerhead shark there, and as a little kid that is the best feeling in the world, well I wasnt really a little kid I was almost old enough to drive but it was a great experience. There was also this wonderful resteraunt down the street from the trailer that my uncle had owned, really nice local seafood place. They also had chicken wings and other types of bar foods, I wasnt old enough to drink alcohol yet, but I stiil managed to sneak a few sips from my uncle being the young rebel that I was. The only thing I didnt like about fishing in the everglades is that the mosqitos there were crazy, I do not know how one could survive without a good amount of mosquito reppelent applied that was the only thing I hated about the place, when you where out by the mangroves next to an island, if you didnt have some mosqito repellent on, you would be gettin eatin alive.

I did not have a digital camera at the time, I think that is when they first started coming out to the public, you needed to have a good amount of money to afford one back then, so I am unable to post any pictures of the couple of trophy fish that we got in our several trips that we made out there. About 9 years ago my uncle had sold the trailer he had in the everglades and got another vacation house, this place was in a much better location for saltwater fishing, one of the best places for saltwater fishing in the world actually. It was down in the Florida Keys, Marathon Key to be precise, but that is a whole different story, where the time I spent in the keys I have caught way more fish, but when I think about the past I still miss the everglades like crazy.

When I was younger, my uncle had owned a Marina and the name of that marina was the Back Bay Marina. I doubt that it is heard of by anyone but the locals of Fort Myers anymore because it had went out of business about 12 years ago. It was a great place, a great marina, and besides them being experts in boat restoration they also had pontoon boat rentals.

One of my first jobs was working for my uncle at the marina and my main job there was to paint the pontoon boats that were going to be in the water soon to rent, and to clean the pontoon boats after the customers had brought them back after a day or a day and a half of renting them. Not a bad job at all I got to meet a lot of new people every day and I got to work on boats which I loved.

There were also a bunch of other boats that were parked there other than a fleet of used pontoon boats, like carolina skiffs and many other kinds of fishing boats. See my uncle had a live shrimp well there also because his marina was also a bait and tackle spot for other fishermen, and the people that would rent the used pontoon boats day in and day out.

At the end of the day we would throw all of the dead shrimp and their carcasses into the water right by the dock. Well it didn’t take long until there was a huge family of snook that started to hang around that very same spot where we tossed the shrimp. I mean there were literally hundreds of them, and I was itching to drop a line in the water and get some out of there. But the snook became more of a show for the marinas customers, especially the people that would be renting used pontoon boats all of the time.

So sure enough my uncle had forbidden everyone to fish for snook at the dock which was right in front of the shrimp well. That didn’t mean there wasn’t any snook along the half a mile of docks that was at the marina. In the day time they would wander off, they were smart and they knew what time the couple thousand of dead shrimp were going to be chucked in the water. So I managed to hook up with many snook many of times fishing the docks of Back Bay Marina. I miss all of the pontoon boats and the good old times, man I wish I could go back in time and be young again.

This had taken place a couple of years ago, and I was with one of my buddies and we were doing some fishing in the bahamas. See it’s real easy to get in some deep sea fishing when in the bahamas because you only need to go out about 50 yards and you are in a thousand feet of water, wish I could fish there every day. So my buddy and I brought out some heavy duty fishing tackle and a couple of deep sea fishing rods, along with some light spinners. We had a good det up, plenty of lures, hooks, and many different kinds of fishing set-ups at our disposal in the tackle box.

So we rigged up some lines and used the gps to find a ship wreck, this was only in about 20 feet of water, a couple of feet to the left was a thousand foot dropoff. We were using some spinning rods and were getting some really nice snapper, drank a couple of beers, caught some more. We had about 8 or 9 keepers, so we were going to eat that night, but we caught a lot of junk fish also. I think if I can remeber correctly, there was a cat fish that we had caught, so we decided to get out the deep sea fishing rod and hook it up. So the bait we were using was about 2-3 pounds, we cut the tail of off the bait so it would bleed. The Bahamas is loaded with sharks, so a wounded bleeding fish as bait is not going to take that long until something big comes and scoops it up.

About 15 minutes later, I hear the drag on the deep sea fishing reel go off, there was something on the line, something huge. The fish had ran for about ten minutes until I could get a full reel in, once I started to reel in I think I got about 2 rotations and then the fish ran off again, about another 5oo feet. This fish was big, so I put on the fighting belt, and just started to work’em. Lift up, reel down, over and over. After about 45 minutes of this fish whooping my ass it finally got near the boat. It was a nurse shark, a huge nurse shark, probably about 12 foot. We were in a small boat so there was no way we were going to land it, we didn’t have the right tools to do it anyways. So I fought the shark hard for about 10 minutes while it was near the boat, trying to get it as close to the boat as I could so that we could get some good pictures of it. I think we got some pretty good ones, here are a few shots of the nurse shark below, this is by far the biggest fish that I have ever caught.

So I had already got to see some of Bimini, and for such a small island it is extremely beautiful. The water is crystal clear and the locals are as friendly as can be, which is great. Now its time to tell you all about the fishing that we did there, we woke up at about 6 am, got ready and then me and my cousin were all set to go out and do some fishing. We werent really going for anything specific we were just trying to catch some decent fish to eat for dinner and so on. But before I get into that, I must tell you that the island Bimini is something else, I mean you could be in about 15 foot of water, and the next thing that you know you are in 1000 plus feet of water, the drop offs that they have there are crazy.

So my cousin and I started to head out a little bit from the island, we had some live shrimp, squid, and whatever other bait fish that we might have caught. We had about 6 fishing rods, all of them were nice expensive fishing rods, three of them were spinners the other three were trolling fishing rods, also know as deep sea heavy duty I am going to catch something really big. We started off at a boat wreck, and we were reeling up some snapper left and right. Then we got into these giant needle nose looking fish, which were easy to catch, but they were really not edible.

Those lil things were fun as hell to fight though, I had caught about thirty of them before I got this one, I really just wanted to get a picture of a decent sized one and here she is. Like I had said before we also got a good amount of snapper too, so we didn’t go home with out any dinner, heres a couple of shots that I took.

We had got about 15 of them, which was real cool, I forget the name of the sanpper, but they are much different then the kind you catch in most parts of florida, they do taste about the same though. That was really it for day one, we had another day of fishing to look forward too and I will definitly share with you everything that we had caught, as in my opinion it was an even more successful day than he previous. After we pulled in we cleaned up the fish, and I immediatly started drinking again, getting ready for another nice night out in the town of Bimini.

So I just recently had wen on a vaction about a week ago, and my cousing had called me and asked me if I wanted to go to the bahamas, bimini. See he has a condo there, and he also has a boat that he keeps parked down there also, its a nice little 20 foot used carolina skiff, and of course he has some guys watching it for him. See in Bimini they don’t have any marinas there, and my cousin just happens to own one. So he gets parts, and brings them to the boaters that are bimini, and they give him t5he best 1st class service that any one could ask for. When he gets there his boat is full of fuel, washed and clean, and ready to go due some fishing. When he leaves the bahams they pull the boat out of the water and they put it into storage. Talk about living the good life, maybe I will have some money like that some day to where I can have a boat specifiacally just for a vacation house. I am not really sure what kind of boat it is, but I am pretty sure that it a caroline skiff, and its about 18 foot long, and equipped with 2 evinrude motors. It also has some outriggers on it for trolling, he likes to so after the big game fish like marlin and also many others, including my favorite, mahi mahi.

Anyways let me get back to the beginning of this post. I was planning on making another fishing trip down to the Keys, but the day before I was going to start driving down there my cousin had called me and asked if I wanted to go to bimini with him and his old lady. Of course I said yes, thank god I had gottin my passport while I was overseas in the United States Navy! So I headed up north about 3 hours to the airport in florida, met up with my cousin and we were on our way. He has a private plane so there was no need for me to buy tickets or anything. Before I boarded the plane I had boght a couple of 12 packs of beer, because over there in bimini they do not sell beer in 12 packs or 6 packs, they sell them in singles at about 4 bucks a piece. And the american beer like budweiser, thats at a domestic price, very expensive, but the liquor on the other hand isn’t that bad priced at all.

So the flight to the bahamas was pretty quick, it took less than an hour from naples airport, the flight back sucks though because you have to go through customs and all of that. But going into the bahama’s was great, and good thing that I had my camera on me because I had taken some pretty cool pictures from the plane of bimini island.

bimini

Great view from the small plane, I really wish that I had a higher quality camera that was handy, but hey it is what it is, jsut glad I could get these couple of shot off. So we show up at the small airport in Bimini, which has only one run way, and we get off, the pilot of my cousins plane does his thing with customs and then takes off. We pass the short security walking through with 12 packs of budweiser, they don’t care, then we take a cab about 4 miles to where my cousins boat is parked. HE tips them and gives them some frozen meat, I think it was hog, and then we are on our way. We show up at the marina and everything was ready, boat looking all nice and stuff, full of fuel, so we got on and started to head to my cousins condo that he owns, which was on the other side of the island, only about a mile or so away. We show up there and we got private parking on a dock right by his condo, no one else can park there, but as I had said earlier, he gives the locals deals on boat parts that they can not get on the island, so he is like royalty to the locals and he gets treated that way also.

Its already about 8 pm when we had arrived at the dock, so we weren’t going to get any fishing in. So we headed to the condo, all showered up and stuff, and got ready to go out in town. We were starving, and we were going to hit up all of the bars on the island, which is only about 3 or 4, the islands only 7 miles long lol. I am going to continue this post in a couple of days or so, as for now I am exhausted of writing, so I will be back with a part two of this fishing vacation in the bahamas.

There are many reasons that people will go after dolphin fish, aka mahi mahi, mostly because you can catch them in a large quantity if you know what you are doing. But going out in the sea and actually catching mahi mahi can be a tedious task, you will spend a lot of money on fuel to go out there and catch them. If you are going for a large quanitity of dolphin, and for size, then you will have to go out quite a bit. When I am referring to ging out I am in referance of Marathon Key, because that is where my dad and I go out to get them. You are looking at atleast 7 miles to catch a school of fish. The further that you go out the better chance that you have to catch bigger and more fish, specifically mahi mahi.

The way that you catch dolphin, well first off you are going to need a power boat that can safely go out to sea, or in this case the gulf of mexico, the ideal milage out would be about 10 miles. Remember, the further that you go out the better chances you have of getting bigger fish. And not only that, the earlier in the morning that you are out there, the better chance you have also, think about it. If you get out there in the afternoon, most of the fish will already be either full, or already caught due to other fisherman that got out there earlier. So the earlier you get out there the better. The biggest mahi mahi that I have caught was weighing around 50 lbs, not bad seeing that the world record is jsut a little bit over 80 lbs. This was when me and my dad had woke up at 430 am, got all of the saltwater fishing tackle onto the boat, and we untied from the dock at about 5 am. We were roughly 12 miles off of marathon key at about 6 am, then we let loose about 7 heavy duty big game fishing rods, all rigged up for dolphin. What we used was ballyhoo, along with a flashy little lure tied to it. We were trolling for about 30 minutes before we got a hit, and there it was, I fought the dolphin for about 15 minutes before I landed it. My dad also had one that was on the hook, he had brought it up to the boat, and left it, as the smaller mahi mahi was swimming in distress, we immediatly threw some lines in with our spinning rods, with some squid as bait, and we caught about 6 schoolys in 20 minutes time. Schooly’s is another name for small mahi mahi. Below is a picture of the trophy fish that I caught.

My name is John and I love to fish, mostly saltwater fishing but I am into everything. On any given day you can catch me swinging a fly rod around trying to get some trout, or maybe out on a little boat just trying to hook up with some bass. Whatever the situation is, I really just love to fish, and there is nothing in this world that I would rather be doing with my spare time.

Let me tell you a little about my self, first off I am 34 years old, I grew up in central Florida in the Fort Meyers area, and I started fishing when I was about 5 or 6 years old, I really can’t remember that far back, all I know is that my dad and my uncle (his brother) have been taking me out to go saltwater fishing forever. They are both a lot better than me, but on the other hand they are both some old salt dogs that have been fishing in florida for over 50 years, so they know what the hell they are doing and they do it good, probably better than the best fisherman that you know. I am currently living in the Keys down in marathon and I must say that it is great, I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else in the world. And believe me I know because I have lived in many states, and even a few countries on top of that.

The reason that I have lived in a few counties is because about 15 years ago I had joined the navy. And I was on a great warship called the USS Lasalle, and she was stationed over in Gaeta Italy, so I stayed over there for about 3 years. I made a lot of good friends while I was on my tour over their, mostly all of the sailors, or shipmates that I worked with, and of course I had made many other friends with the local Italians. They were nice, and you know that I got in some good fishing with them. Those stories of me fishing in Italy are yet to come, don’t worry, I will be making many posts on my fishing adventures so you can read and enjoy them, almost as much as I enjoyed catching them, well maybe not that much. LOL.

I have been married once, and that had lasted a whopping 2 years, this was back when I was 26 years old, a few years after I had gottin out of the united stated navy. Everyone had told me not to get married but of course I am not one to take advice, even though they were my friends just trying to warn me because they have been caught up in the same situation, and the same outcome has happened to them every single time. I myself had to learn the hard way, and thankfully, I have been single since. I do not have any kids, and I am getting pretty old to have kids so I dont think that will be in my future, that and I don’t really date that much, i am into fishing just a little to much.

What I do for a living is independant handyman work, meaning that I am my own contractor, I get paid by semi-big companies to do handyman work, its okay I guess. It more than pays the bills, and I get plenty of time off to go out to sea and catch some fish. If I ever save up enough money I want to get my own charter boat and be a captain, charging people a hundred or so a piece to take them out fishing in the keys, right off of marathon key. That will be my ideal dream, then I can make money off of doing what I love to do, which is fish full time, even though mostly I will be aiding the people on the boat catching some saltwater fish, but to me that is just as fun.