Capt. Rich and I would like to thank Michael, one of our most impressive students, for driving down from the Orlando area this morning and helping out on our charter. Michael has expressed interest in learning how to run a fishing charter, and this morning was his first opportunity to learn. He has been with us on boat trips during summer camp, but this was his first trip out with paying customers.
We cleared the Boynton Beach Inlet at 7:30am, and within minutes we had our first hits. The first couple of hits were mostly bonitos, but we had a nice size barracuda in the mix. After about 10 bonitos, we finally found a school of blackfin tunas and skipjack tunas. We trolled for about two hours and landed 3 skipjacks, 5 blackfin, and stopped counting the bonitos at around 20. Michael did extremely well learning how to set up the planner and helping take fish off the hooks.
Around 9:45am we headed out to about 200ft and started our drift for kingfish and bottom fish. We once again landed a few bonitos, along with 2 kingfish, a nice speckled hind groupers, a vermillion snapper, and many more bottom fish.
We had an epic day of fishing, but what made it even more amazing was seeing a student take interest in the industry. Michael will be more than welcome to help out on any future charters we may have.
In other news, this week was the first week of classes for our new high school fishing and LifeSkills programs. We started at Santaluces High School, Belle Glade Boys and Girls Club, Belle Glade YEC, and Seagull Academy. We are looking forward to an amazing year of programs with the high school students and can not wait for more schools to sign up.
