Capt. Simon Black
My neighbor Kevin, a recently replanted South African, had just reached out to me.
“I want to catch a big fish,” he said. “All the fish I ever caught my whole life… were small.”
I took a couple of seconds before responding.
“I think I understand your problem,” I said. “Little man, little fish. Big man, BIG FISH!”
I loaded up rods, leaders, pliers, drift anchor, bait and some ice. His wife, as usual, prepared food for eight and off we went, screaming through the inlet on his 24-foot single-engine Seafox. It was straight out to the high bar and lines in. Two hours and two nice mutton snapper later, he looked over at me grinning and said, “I said a big fish.”
“Well, OK… one last chance. Pull in all these lines and let’s go set up one more time,” I told him.
I was not really paying attention when I looked up to notice we’d drifted north. So, I grabbed the helm and spun the boat around, setting us directly on top of the coastal shelf. With the drift anchor out, we dropped multiple lines to cover the water column.
Patience, a small prayer… a granola bar, some water, then… blamo! His largest surf caster went off and bent nearly 180 degrees.
For the next 25 minutes I was convinced it was a shark. His spool was starting to run out, and I was trying to get the boat started. All of a sudden the fish turned and swam right back at the boat, full speed. Kevin ran to the bow. The fish turned and came to the surface. “Wahoo!” I reached over, gaffed the fish, and into the box it went. A 40-pounder right on the button!
Capt. Simon can be found at www.boatbully.com.