There’s a reason we call it fishing and not catching. Sure, there are some days when everything comes together and we fill the fish box with our targeted species, but we all know there are also some days when we can’t buy a bite. In other words, sometimes you are the bat and sometimes you are the ball. Then there are days when the last minute Hail Mary works or something unexpected happens. These are the days that keep us coming back for more.
Just a few weeks ago, I was fishing in the Lake Worth KDW with my good friends from the Profishn’t Fishing Team out of Palm Beach Inlet. With a livewell full of goggle eyes and threadfin herring, we blasted out of the inlet and ran north to Jupiter as our intel suggested there were some big kingfish in the area. Upon arrival, we found nice, clean water with some decent current and set up our first drift. Within minutes, we had a few bonito in the box. Unfortunately, the tax men showed up in numbers shortly thereafter and we were forced to move. Running back south, we encountered a problem with the port engine and couldn’t go as fast as we would have liked.
Half way back to the inlet, we stopped and set up again where we were immediately invaded by big schooling bonito. We laughed about how we would be in the winner’s circle if this was the annual Bonito Blast out of Stuart. Though we had constant rod bending action, we never sniffed the first kingfish, dolphin or wahoo. Then the sharks showed up again. We decided to run back closer to the inlet in hopes of the outgoing tide producing one big kingfish or wahoo.
Once again, the bonitos found our baits and we decided to catch as many as we could before the sharks showed up. Then, out of the blue, it happened. At first, I thought it was another big bonito. Then I thought it was a shark. Whatever it was took me around the boat three times and had me pinned to the gunwale on several occasions. When I saw a brief flash of color, I thought it might be a big blackfin tuna. After a gruelling, twenty minute fight, we had the fish right next to the boat and put the gaff in my first ever african pompano. Suddenly, our tough day on the water turned into a miraculous one with big smiles and high fives all around. Once the celebration was over, we went back to fishing only to have the sharks show up again. We had some fun feeding them with some of the bonito that we had caught and called it a day.
~ Gene Dyer