Ok...so for multiple reasons I've held off on saying much here about our trip to the Keys and I will provide a "proper/full" report with pics and perhaps vids later after it's all said and done (and we're not so busy fishing I can put it together
) but today was just truly epic - one of those days you remember forever.
Fished in the gulf about 60 miles from KW north of the Tortugas. We caught 20 lb. class blackfin and bonita at will lots of different ways including on the fly. That is what the subject line of this post refers to....I am now quite confident that if you look up the term "knuckle buster" it would have a picture of a fly reel handle when there is a blackfin like this on the other end of the line! I was using our guides 10 weight but good grief a normal man can only take so much of that before you'd have to qualify it as self-abuse and masochistic.
Caught them sight pitching baits to them as well as on topwater on a very light for the task spinning rod (I'd use this one for hybrids at home) and on fly. Had one 20 lb. or so blackfin come out of the water and land on the lure at the strike. That image alone was worth the price of entry in my book.
Then to top it off through a series of coincidences we were Bill Dances' camera boat for a little while today as we fished side by side and then my son got on the boat with Bill and his crew to fish a while. Bill was a real gentleman thanking us many times for taking the time to help them out. I also took the opportunity to thank him for speaking up about the COE nonsense. I also commented about how ironic it was to find ourselves 60 miles out in the gulf only to run into another Tennessean. Of course it was not an accident as we knew this was going to happen as of last night. Funny story...as we were leaving the marina yesterday and Bill was leaving with one of the other guides (that I'd fished with a couple of years ago) I mentioned to our guide that when I was 19 or so I ran into Bill on Pickwick one day. Then today when we pulled up to the other boat for his film crew to board our boat Bill spoke to our guide by name and then looked at me and said "Hi Tim". It's only been 35 years or so and it was just a few minutes conversation at that. I'm quite sure the guides put that together but it was still funny...to me anyway.
Much more with pics to come in a full report but it was a very, very cool day.
