One of the guys in our association had a birthday recently and his son bought him a professional fishing trip for his birthday.  Lucky guy.  He was able to bring a few friends and it turns out, Gary was considered a friend, so Gary got to go on the deep see fishing adventure.  Now I didn’t get to go along so I only have one picture, you just can’t trust these men to put down their fishing rods for one minute and take a couple of pictures.  But here is what happened.

The boat was out of Naples so they had to get up bright and early to get to the boat on time.  All six of them left here at 4:30 in the morning along with coolers of ice for their big catch.

The boat was a commercial fishing boat about 45 feet long.  They said the first mate deserved an A+ for his job.  The fishermen just stood at the side of the boat with their rods in their hands and the first mate, put on the bait, took off the fish, if you caught one, and all the while he was fishing off the back of the boat to catch bait fish with a net.  If they didn’t catch anything within 15 minutes or so, the Captain moved the boat to another location.  They were just fishing for red grouper.  Gary caught the most and the biggest fish and he got a free T-Shirt to prove it .  Everyone was able to catch their limit and had a lot of fun with the catch and release fish too.

On the way back to shore, they boys were beat, what with all the fresh air and the straining to pull in those big fish.  Luckily the boat was well quipped and there were a few bunks and couches in the cabin they but got a comfy place to catch a nap.  One poor guy had to sleep sitting up on a cooler in the back of the boat LOL.  I bet he’ll be quicker to dibs a bunk next time

So here is the one and only picture of their catch

Big ugly fish

After the photo op was over, the first mate cleaned and filleted all the fish.  Lucky they had all those coolers with ice to carry home their catch.  They arrived home at about 7:30.  We had a yummy fish fry and were able to hear all the tall fish tales about the ones that got away.