I love a 3/4 day charter. It gives you so many options for finding fish. We fish an edge here off of St. John for pelagic fish like Mahi, Wahoo and Tuna and it is only an eight mile run from the mooring so you really only need a 1/2 day charter or 4 hours of fishing to be able to get into some fish. However, the 6 hour 3/4 day allows for a little more search, and in yesterday's case, DESTROY fishing. The storied edge where it goes from 98ft to 212ft to 316ft to ----- on the sounder in 40 yards of trolling signifies having gone off the deep end of the pool. Sitting all of a sudden in 2000+ft of blue water there is going to be little action until you find something floating or birds working. Out in the "deep" you don't get your lines knocked down by barracudas, jacks, kingfish, or other none pelagic fish. In fact, you rarely get the line even knocked down unless you are expecting it. Begging the question, how to you expect fish. . . .let me show you. We were boring our guests for the first hour, explaining that everything was fine, deep fishing means searching for stuff and that we were just looking for signs so that we could really start fishing. Labeling me Eagle Eyes, Fisherman Chris on our charter boat World Class has dubbed me the finder of fish so I generally go up on the gunwale when the seas allow and having spotted some frigates to the north east (we had gone five miles out and were making a turn back towards the edge) Chris made the turn in the appropriate direction and after locking in on what I saw a few minutes later we were finally about to start fishing. We picked up a small 10 pound wahoo right away and warning signals went off in our heads. There is only one reason a small wahoo would be out in the deep like this. . . there was a floater somewhere nearby that we needed to find. Back up on the gunwale Chris did the circles until I spotted the what we knew was there, a nice sized yellow buoy with a little line hanging off it and lots of white fingernail sized mussels and some hairy growth on it. All trolling lines in and a quick punch on the gps to mark it and the game changed to light tackle so we could feed these traveling souls live bait. Mahi can reproduce at 3 months old, they are 20 pounds at 4-5 months and they are dying old geezers by 4 years old. A drifting, floater with its own ecosystem is literally a lifeline for a lifetime to a school of young Mahi. They can hang off the floater a few hours while small fish drift into it to seek shelter and then come in for their own feast, repeating the bait and wait game that the floater offers for months at a time as long as the floater stays in the right drift pattern, or until someone like us shows up with hooks. We were there with hooks and a final meal, boating a nice take of 15 Mahi and 4 Wahoo as well as my personal dinner table favorite, two Triple tail. We left tons of Mahi and 4 Triple tail on the floater and even had the chance to tag a Mahi for CSS Dolphinfish Tagging Study. Tag number 17080, hopefully the little female will make her way along the current and is recaptured in a few months.

New Job

Well, since I no longer own my own charter snorkel company and I was fired from my last captain job because I "reported too many things broken" to the owner including the need to buy replacement fire extinguishers that were expired, it is time to start working again. I decided that since this is probably my last season on St. John I should do what I love and be around people I enjoy. That decided, I'll be working on a fishing boat this season with my great friend Fisherman Chris and his company World Class Anglers. I guess that makes me Fisherman Josh. Expect a few interesting stories about fish, guests, the challenges of selling our catch, tips on which local restaurants are buying our fresh catch, top secret fishing techniques (like a BIC pen we have ziptied to the downrigger to hold a line out from the boat when livebait fishing), and some cool pictures. The Virgin Islands, and especially here on St. John we are blessed with a year round sport fishing industry giving us the ability to catch all kinds of great pelagic fish as well as reef fish. If you want to go out with us give us a call 340-344-1155.

My First Marlin Adventure

Tomorrow I'll be headed out on my first ever Marlin trip. Somehow I am the captain but I will have along my friend who is going to be the professor of Marlin. Fishing the South drop is something I have done hundreds of times but fishing 30 miles North in the undisputed Caribbean Marlin epicenter is somewhere I have never been. The vessel is the Scout 345XSF and the weather looks beautiful, we should be able to punch out the morning run in 45 minutes with our twin Yamaha 350hp engines and sweet riding stepped hull!

Bigger is Better

Big boats might not catch bigger fish but I can't wait to fish the newest boat the owner I work for sent down this week. The new Scout 345 XSF is amazing and if you have teh money it is the only boat you need to rule the roost both in the fishing grounds and the cruising entertainment joy ride grounds. Since I have only had it out once I don't have any good pictures of the actual boat so I used one from the Scout website. Mine is beige. Two features that make it a fishing boat, TWO huge livewells and it goes 40 knots through 4ft-5ft stacked seas! Two features that make it a beach hopping cruising pleasure boat, a bow sun lounge and a side door that opens into the water! Of course many other features compliment it but these four things are excellent for their given jobs BUT don't interfere with each other. Hopefully I will get to fish it soon and can send some pictures of blood on the new decks.

Shark Bait

Out fishing last week we put our bait in the wrong place at the right time. We had been live baiting the south drop towards what we call the western corner for a while with little success at the intended species, Rainbow Runners and Blackfin tuna when one of our spinning rods took off. Using a live pilchard with a new technique presented by my friend James from North Carolina he put a small egg weight before the 30lb fluorocarbon leader. It was working nicely to keep the baits off the surface and away from the birds but after it sank 20-30feet was when his reel took off. After the initial run I knew I had to move the boat because it actually ran slightly forward of the beam and odd run given that most fish run back and away. Down it went too, not out and up giving it a good possibility at a nice Blackfin tuna. I had to practically run the boat in a circle to keep the fish on our beam and quite fast too but I couldn't get it to stay behind the boat as James worked the rod smoothly up and down to gain line. Color. There it was on the surface, yellowish brown and clearly a tired lemon shark after the fifteen minute battle. With the rear wash gate open and the small seas James took five steps backwards and all of a sudden this beautiful animal is sitting on the deck out of its element where it commands all it encounters and into mine where we call the shots. The small live bait treble hook had perfectly pierced the corner of its mouth and was easily removed. James lifted it by the tail and then secured its body and head for that incredible picture above. Apparently lemon sharks are very tasty but we released ours with a lot of excitement and high fives.

A True Mixed Bag

My good friend Chris (who is actually known as Fisherman Chris) runs a charter boat company called World Class Anglers (340-344-1155 and www.worldclassanglers.com) and every now and again he takes me on his charters as his mate. Usually I get to do this when he has a lot of trips booked in the week and towards the end he wants me to come along and do all the work running the lines, rigging bait, hauling coolers and so forth. This gives him what he calls a break even though he is still working as hard as the next charter boat trying to get his guests dinner. In any event, it is a good chance for me to go fishing and that is exactly what I got to do yesterday. We went to the North Drop about 20 miles north of St. John where the Puerto Rican trench begins. The drop goes from 150feet to about 2,000 and then as you go another 25 miles further it drastically falls off to over 6,000 and then 12,000. We hit our first bite before the edge at some high spots and a true smoker was hooked. The line came off the down rigger and stayed bent but was only just crawling off the reel as I grabbed it and checked the set. As the guest on board hardly knew the line had been knocked down I yelled to have him come get the rod. It is second nature to see lines go off and then have the rod in hand before the fish starts its run but it takes time to have that connection with a boat. Its sort of the same in your own car, there are noises that you are familiar with and once in a while you hear something new and it startles you the moment you hear or feel it. The guest came to get the rod and I plopped it in his belt just in time for him to feel exactly what he was paying to experience. Ten if not twelve solid seconds of screaming line going behind the boat giving evidence to one of two possible species we had just hooked up, Wahoo or Kingfish. If you have never been spooled like this before it is a frightening and antsy moment. You feel helpless and you don't know what to do, you know if that fish can keep up the endurance he will set himself free although he will have quite a long leash until the hook corrodes away or slips out after a week. In fact, there is one thing you must do in this situation. Enjoy the moment and do nothing. Seriously, you just smile and watch the reel spin because you know that as fast as that line is going out it is going to be spooled back much slower so save your breath now. You do nothing but smile because you know you have hooked a great fish, something strong enough to pull 50lbs of drag for over ten seconds. This fish turned out to be a 30 pound smoker, a Kingfish. Gaffed and on board we all got to feel that satisfying exuberance that comes from battling an adversary and winning. Lines back in the water and away we went only to have the same scenario happen twenty minutes later although a shorter initial run the smaller Kingfish was worked back to the boat with methodical patience and instruction to the guest, lean back and pull the rod up then drop it down and reel in the difference created, lean back and rod up, lean down and crank the line in. About 30 yards away we saw our first flashes of silvery blue color and knew it was another Kingfish and he was tired, having been worked over for the last ten minutes. 25 yards now and that is when my strategy changed abruptly, "crank, crank, crank, reel, reel, forget the up and down motion just get that fish in now!" A brown menace had appeared behind our target and was swaggering about 10 yards behind the king. It was making a serpentine right behind the king as we were still moving 2 or 3 knots through the water. Then it disappeared and I knew we were done with this battle with just 15 yards to go. "He's not fighting me anymore I'm getting it in Josh." "I know, we just got sharked." I gaffed the corpse and our king came on board surprisingly whole as the shark had only taken the tail off our fish! The brown machine stayed 10 yards behind the boat for about twenty seconds before deciding wisely that his meal was now ours. The bite was so clean, so perfect and so swift that the 18 pound king was still flopping around the deck. What an efficient creature the shark is to do such damage with such little effort. Later in the day we filled out the fish box with three nice blackfin tuna, a skipjack tuna, and two peanut 7 pound mahi!

Big Boat Intro

I had the chance to go to the real world for a number of weeks recently and took it! With the sale of my powerboat charter business in July I suddenly had no job and a desire to spend some time with my family as well as my friends in the states. A big part of the enjoyment came from being able, for the first time in five years, to be home during a time of year when vegetable gardens were producing their crops! I ate corn on the cob every night for a month except for about three times I would bet. Among other favorites were tomatoes that did not taste like cardboard and my sisters creation of battered squash blossoms with a honey drizzle. Ok, enough about the food on to the fishing. Since I no longer have the Scout 282SF to take fishing periodically I should introduce you all to my newest battle wagon that is ready to take on the Virgin Islands South and North Drops. It is called "Factory Hookup" and she is a beautiful Scout 350 Abaco. On her own bottom she was run down from Charleston, SC for the owner and I am now taking care of her. She is powered with twin 350 yamaha outboards and cruises at about 30knots. I have found she is most comfortable at 28knots and it rough weather 18knots is the magic number to let her squat down and take the wavers off her broad and proud Carolina bow while giving us a gentle ride towards the back of the boat. If seas are flat she can run out at just under 50knots, if your wallet can handle it of course! The owner makes his way down every four or five weeks so I don't get a lot of opportunity to use it and as we all know using a boat is the best way to keep maintenance costs down so I just had to take it out the other day when some friends offered to pay for fuel. It was a good chance to put a little gas through the filters and clean the bottom up a little. We didn't do any fishing but we did catch a good time.