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.
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