Big Pine Key 2014

[randlemanboater]

Took the family to BPK Fishing Lodge for a week, the first couple days the wind was still, 107 degree heat index, which makes for some miserable hot conditions, but also makes for some great conditions offshore.

There were many reports of Mahi Mahi "eating the transoms off of boats" so my son and I went out about 17 miles in 650 feet of water and caught about 30 Mahi. We ended up keeping 13 which yielded 3 gallons of fillets!

One of the nicer ones.



The phone camera doesn't capture the amazing colors of the fish "all lit up".





The first and smallest one we kept.



Then the wind picked up so we caught a few grouper around bridges, nothing too big.



We also made it out to Looe Key Coral Reef, which is a protected live coral area, we saw 3 Goliath Grouper among the 1000's of fish on the reef, the largest (in the pics below) was at least 8 feet long. My wife was in the boat when he was under it and could see his head sticking out a foot on one side and tail sticking out a foot on the other side.





We also got a video, I will try to get it on here too.

All in all it was a great time, we followed up by spending 5 days at Disney (my girls wanted to go)...now to replenish the vacation fund.