Bounty Hunter

Fall is in the air and the fishing is great. The temperature only hit 90 today so it feels like a cold spell compared with the summer we’ve had. It feels  good and the humidity is low too. Great time to get outdoors, walk the beach, get in the water and go fishing.

The kings are biting and there are even some Spanish mackerel out there. The sharks are still lurking around and are a blast to catch. Pretty exciting for people who have never caught a fish in their lives! Tunas should be showing up soon so it’s time for some deep water trolling. We may be able to pick up some dolphin fish on those longer trolling trips too.

Book your weekend snapper trips in October and November now. The Destin Fishing Rodeo is paying cash this year so don’t miss out on that! It goes on the whole month of October.

The  Emerald Coast Convention and Visitors Bureau has granted the Rodeo $70,000 to be used to bring visitors to the 2010 Rodeo!  This is pretty exciting because these are CA$H prizes not just the trophies and fishing rods like they usually have. Apparently BP gave the area some money to try to promote tourism and the rodeo got a cut of it. Good news for you fishermen out there!

Here is the list of cash prizes:

King Mackerel,       Amberjack,         Black Fin Tuna,       Snapper
1st Place $6,000         2nd Place $3,000          3rd  Place $1,000

Now you may be looking at the “snapper” category and saying to yourself “hummmmmmm? I thought snapper was closed”. Well we said the same thing since red snapper season closed on the 23 of July this year. I just went to the rodeo web site and they have not updated it in a year so there was no information there. They may be talking about black snapper, mingo, lane, who knows? I e-mailed the head of the rodeo a couple weeks ago and have not gotten a reply yet but I will keep you posted.

They are “talking” about opening red snapper season up again since this has been a year that very few have been caught due to the fact that most of the boats were not fishing but working for BP. There are some that want the quota that we did not reach this year to be added to our quota for next year to enable us to have a longer season and there are others that want to have it opened this year just so we can have a decent fall season. It’s all “wishin’ and hopin’”. The feds are the ones that ultimately decide what you are going to get and they’ve proven time and time again that they could care less about any input we may have  so, as usual, we are at the mercy of our great and oh so powerful federal government who will decide what kind of fish you will catch, how many and when you will catch them. We will see.

We’ve already got trips booked for October so don’t wait too long to reserve your day. We’ve got some great regular October people that look forward to fishing with us. We love the repeat business, we see the kids get bigger and it’s like your family has come back to visit! Call us, we want to hear from you y’all know Mark loves to talk about fishing!

Well after spending  Sunday, July 25th getting everything back on the boat  for fishing we got home at about 3:30. Everybody showered up and sat down to rest from being in the 100 degree day walking up and down those stairs to the boat. At 4:45 the phone rang and it was BP! They finally activated us which gives us a chance to make up some of the money we lost on this season. That was the good news we’d been waiting for. The only down side of it was that we had to get all the fishing stuff off the boat before 6am the next day. So off we all went to undo everything we’d just done. We were all tired but happy to have the opportunity to make some good money….finally!

We’ve had a pretty good run with them and have had the opportunity to do some interesting work. We have been taking out the “water quality” guys for the past week. Every other day Mark takes them to a specific spot, we drop the anchor, shut off the engines and generator and they take samples of the water. Today they took samples of the soil on the bottom too. They are a nice bunch of guys and we really don’t know who they work for but we enjoy having them on board. Captain Mark has been putting them dead on the spot.

When we don’t have a water sampling day we are patrolling parallel to the beach in a line with 4 other boats extending out about 3 miles looking for anything suspicious in the water.  We’ve gone way down to Grayton Beach and to Navarre but mostly we stay in the Destin Ft. Walton area.  So far, so good. They’ve found a few things and they were cleaned up right away so basically nothing much is getting past us. Yesterday I found a palm tree stump. Took a few minutes to figure that one out!

They are down sizing here quickly and we know that our time on this BP program is probably very short but we are thankful for at least having some time to help make up for the lost fishing season we’ve all experienced. One great thing for us is that we never had to get out in all the heavy oil which would have caused problems for the boat mechanically and damaged the hull.

Soon we are going back to fishing, probably any day now so go ahead and give us a call to book your trip. Stay tuned for some exciting news about the Destin Fishing Rodeo in October. I will write about that in the next few days.

This is it for red snapper for 2010. The shortest season in history, as far as we know. What a shame it is because just the fact that the oil spill has caused 99% of boats NOT to be out fishing this year should be enough for the federal government to lift the ban. But nooooooooooooooo we don’t want to do that! This country has been on a down slide into total governmental control over the fishing industry for years so I can’t blame this just on the creature in the white house, as much as I’d like to. It’s all getting pretty scary!

It looks like we completely missed out on the big BP money but things happen for a reason. Every boat in Destin that did work for them for months and ran hard through all the oil are either having or will soon have mechanical problems and won’t be able to fish. The good news for them is that they will have plenty of money to fix the boats. The bad news is that there are only a couple of mechanics in town and they won’t be able to get to all the boats to fix them. The mates that deserted us and  ran off to ride the BP $$ train will also sit because we’ve found a couple dedicated people that are here for us.

The fishing is great due to the fact that there has been no depletion of the fish at all this summer. We can get great catches on 4 hour trips and everyone is happy. We’ve never had catches like this on short 4 hour trips but this year has been like no other. We  fish any trips that come along and give our people the best time that we can. The water and beaches are still great. Any oil that does reach the beach is cleaned up pretty fast and there is no sign of anything here now.

Now all the “BP/charter”  boats can sit an watch us go by with happy fishing people. Be some of those people and book your trip with us!

Come on people, we are set up and ready to go fishing again. We’ve had a couple trips since we gave up on BP hiring us, caught a lot of snapper, a bunch of amberjacks and everyone had a great time. We only have 5 days of red snapper season left so give us a call and book your trip now!

It’s been over two weeks since BP called us. We were  given an assignment, instructions to get all the fishing gear off the boat, set the boat up for sleeping, and buy food for 3 days for all the crew. Before we could start  we had to get our yellow hazmat cards which we did 3 days later.  We did everything they said to do and we are still waiting for a call from them. I can’t begin to tell you what we’ve gone through with these people for the past couple of months!

We have decided to wait no more. Mark and James are putting the rods and fishing gear back on the boat tomorrow and will take trips again when they come up. There are literally only a few boats still fishing and we will be one of them once again. Mark is excited about it because this is what he wants to do anyway.

Fishing is great, lots to catch and no competition from other boats so it’s easy. Snapper season ends on July 24th so if that is your fish of choice better hurry!

Monday night at the Destin city council meeting we were told that the Destin pass would be closed on the incoming tide.  That means that we would have to plan our trips around the tide changes and potentially get stuck out in the Gulf and not be able to get back in. Well, the plan didn’t work and the closure didn’t happen so we are  back to fishing.

The fishing is great out there. Some of the boat captains we talked to today said the fishing is very good and you don’t have to travel far to find it.  We can’t wait until Monday when we’ve got a trip to run in the morning! All we want to do is go fishing, don’t you?

Mark and Ben are out catching fish every day and lots of them. Snapper are plentiful and the sharks are really biting making for some exciting days out on the water. They’ve caught a sailfish (released it) and seen turtles and other interesting things in the water.

They had 2 trips yesterday and had great fun with both of them. The kids on the afternoon trip caught a blacktip shark after getting their snapper limit and were loving it. There is a big increase in shark activity in the area, they are seeing lots of them everyday.

Kyle left us to go work for BP and we were sorry to see him go but understand that it was a good opportunity for him and his family. Many of you know Ben from the past 2 years as our second mate. He’s learned everything he knows on the Bounty Hunter and he’s doing a great job.

As most of you probably know from the news, the oil is almost here now. Mark was in some 5 miles to the southwest yesterday and other boats were seeing it as close as 3 miles from the Destin pass so it’s close but we will fish until they tell us we can’t. There are skimmer ships very near working away at getting up the oil. This weekend 2 big metal containers floated up on beaches in Panama City and in Destin. One was marked “bp horizon” so it’s pretty safe to assume that it came off the rig. Mark saw some kind of debris in the pass yesterday too but couldn’t identify it.

This is pretty bad but as with every crisis, this too shall pass and we will be there stronger than ever to continue on. We will just keep fighting and keep working at what we do best, FISH!