Christmas Donations

Capt Rich, Ray, Scooty, Odinald, Jean, and I would like to thank the  Ms. Brie and her family for their more than generous donation of fishing rods, lures, and pliers to four of our most deserving students.  Early last week Ms. Brie contacted us asking to donate some fishing rods to four of our students, and right away I knew which of our students were the most deserving.  Ray and Scooty have been attending classes and helping anyway they can for the last three years.  On top of all the help they have provided, they are two of our most enthusiastic anglers and I know if I ever need to find them they will be fishing at the marina or the inlet.  The day they received their fishing rods they went right out to Rays new secret fishing hole (he won't even tell me where it is!) and caught a few snook and jacks.  Odinald and Jean are two of our students out at the Belle Glade YEC.  We started teaching them at the beginning of this semester, and they volunteered to teach the program to the younger students at their center.  Thanks to them, every students at the center has gone through the first section of our program.  We all can not thank Ms. Brie and her family enough for everything they have done for our students, and I know they appreciate it more than I can tell her family.  We look forward to seeing and fishing with Ms. Brie and her family a lot more in the future, and can not wait to learn some new tricks from her children who are accomplished anglers as well.

In fishing news....we had two fishing charters in the last week.  On Friday we took a group of three people out in the afternoon.  It was the first nice day in a long time and we enjoyed calm seas and decent fishing.  We caught a big bonito and blackfin tuna on a light tackle troll, and then set up of the reef for a drift.  During the drift we had a bunch of bite off and snapped lines, but we managed to bring in a ton of blue runners, triggerfish, and other reef species.  We even caught sight of a lone swordfish on the surface for about 5 seconds.

Yesterday we had another fishing charter in the morning.  The ocean was not nearly as nice as Friday but we pushed through the waves, and it paid off.  We set up a troll from the inlet to just north of the Lake Worth pier, and caught 5 blackfin tuna in 130ft, as well as a large bonito.

Everyone at the Florida Fishing Academy would like to thank everybody who has made this year such a great success, and we are looking forward to having an even bigger year in 2012.  We are moving up to Riviera Beach in the next few day, and look forward to seeing everyone up there for some amazing fishing, kayaking, and snorkeling.

Fishing and golf...who could ask for a better two weeks

The last few weeks have seemed like the busiest two weeks this year.  We have had fishing trips with our students, a successful golf fundraiser, and participated in a career day at Village Academy in Delray Beach.

We finished our 1st section of classes at Riviera Beach Maritime Academy a few weeks ago, and due to the interest from the students, we invited the top 12 preforming students to come fishing on the boat.  It was not a very nice day, with the winds around 20 knots and seas building to about 5ft when we came back in.  We started off trolling out front of Boynton Inlet and caught a few bonitos and a nice dolphinfish.  Around 10am we headed in to about 100ft and set up a drift.  It was slow at first but them we started catching bluerunners and small snappers.  Right as we were picking up to head back out for a final drift, another dolphinfish took a sardine in 30ft of water.  We set up another drift, and once again found ourselves surrounded with bluerunners.  With the seas picking up and two nice dolphin in the boat we decided to call it a day.

The following morning we had our first annual golf tournament.  We would all like to thank all who came out, as well as all of the volunteers and sponsors who made the tournament such a success.  Three of my Santaluces students even came out to brave the wind and rain, and try their hand at golf.  The Santaluces students and I headed out with grand hopes of winning the tournament, but sadly found ourselves in last place at the end of play.  Despite not meeting our goal of pulling an upset, the four of us had an amazing time doing our best to do so.

Last Friday we had a reporter from the Miami Herald join us on the boat with a few of our Seagull Academy students.  We woke up again to some very strong winds and heavy seas.  Some of the students had never been on a boat before, so instead of taking them out in the rough seas we decided to try fish in the Intracoastal.  The fishing was extremely slow, we couldn't even get the fish to bite at the marina; but despite the slow fishing we did manage to catch a sand perch, some bluerunners, and a nice big mangrove snapper (which were all released).

This past Saturday I met about 8 students at the boat ramp,and surprise surprise...it was windy and rough.  We fished the outside pier of the boat ramp, and started catching the usual snappers, grunts, and bluerunners.  After about an hour Layne turned to me and said he had caught a rock, but for some reason this rock was swimming away very slowly.  A few minutes later he brought up a nice 16" flounder which he very proudly took home to his parents for dinner.

This past Monday and yesterday we were asked to come talk to the Village Academy High School students about sustainability, ethical angling and possible career choices that may interest them once they graduate high school.  I would like to thank all the teachers involved and all the students for their interest, and for allowing us to come in a talk to their students about what we do.  We are also extremely excited to start a fishing club at Village Academy next semester.