THE BIG SNOOK

    She hit real hard yelled my wife. I have something really big on this time. I said don’t let any slack get in your line.

    

    My wife and fishing partner went out early that morning to fish the Pirate Harbor Flats for Redfish on the incoming tide. We could see tails waving in the air and slowly made our way out in front of where they were heading for an intercept. We got the and just went silent until the school or Redfish made it to within casting distance. I got the boat into position and went silent until the school of Redfish made it to within casting distance. We both made a cast to just ahead of the school and let our gold spoons sit on the bottom, hoping the school of Reds would not veer off left or right. When the school of fish got to wishing 10 feet of our spoons, I said just bounce the spoon up and down but don’t reel in any line. It only took a couple of bounces until both of us immediately were hooked up, and our fish were heading far away from the boat. It took a bit of time to reel them back in but we both managed to boat two oversized Reds of about 30 inches. The legal slot size for Redfish is 18 to 27 inches. So we let them both go and looked around to see if we could see the rest of that school and where they went. Nothing in sight but that’s generally the way it goes down unless you are tossing bait fish at the school to keep them happy and close.

    

    We motored to another location and I noticed something odd as we approached the mangrove shoreline. It looked like two large wings flapping in the shallow water. I had set the electric trolling motor in the water and slowly eased over to see what the hell was going on, as it was stationary. I got the boat to within 50 feet and shut the trolling motor off so we would not spook whatever it was. Then the light bulb lit, and I said it was a large stingray feeding in the grass. I bet that there are Reds feeding in all that commotions as well, something they will often do to get a free meal. Over the many years of fishing here in the Charlotte Harbor waters that I have managed to learn is that predatory fish will follow stingrays and manatees as both of these feed on the bottom often stirring up shrimp, crabs, and small baitfish that hide in the deep seagrass. I have seen 30 to 50 pound Cobia circling a small school of manatees. Tarpon will also follow manatees around. However, this time it was Big Redfish. We slowly drifted closer to the feeding action dropping both our spoons right into the feeding frenzy and managed to catch two more oversized Redfish out of that school.

    

    It was around noon, so we found some shade under some mangroves and had our lunch. We brought a couple of beers but choose water instead. After lunch is generally about the time we pack it up and head back to the boat ramp. Generally speaking, high noon does not offer good fishing unless there is a strong tide to move the baitfish or flushing out the small shrimps and cranes out of the grass flats. I was ready and said lets head to the barn…cracker language for home. But on this day, my fishing partner wanted to go over to Hobbs Point and fish the inside water along the shoreline, an area that we were both well familiar with years of fishing in that area. I said it wasn’t going to be any good as the tide is not moving yet and it's 1pm … she insisted and so we motored to our standard location and set out the trolling motor and slowly made our way north within casting distance to the mangrove-lined shoreline. There are three old telephone poles right at the edge of the water from where there used to be a house built out on the point years ago and now torn down. Most of the peninsula was made by a dragline that dug out the bottom along the leeward side of Hobbs Point sometime back in the 50s. The dragline would reach out as far as it could, about 50 feet from the shoreline, and gouged out the bottom about 6-foot deeper than the surrounding bottom to about 20 feet from the bank, which left a 6-foot deep depression about 20 foot wide by about a quarter of a mile long. Over the years, the bottom filled in a some but there was still a depression which seemed to hold fish.

    I was using my ultralight rod and reel with only a 4-pound test line, which is generally sufficient to fight and land very large Redfish when there are no obstructions to deal with. I had a 4 inch DOA shrimp soft bait on and was casting to the mangroves and back to the boat. I should have switched rods for one with a 10-pound test line. I made a cast and let the shrimp swing back behind the boat when all of a sudden my rod was about to be launched into orbit. I grabbed it just in time to keep it earthbound, and the rod bent nearly double. Then this huge snook leaped into the air rattling its gill plates and landed back in the water and went directly into the mangrove roots…pop went my line. I was dumbfounded and stunned, to say the least by its enormous size. I would guess that this was a 40 inch 35 pound plus snook. I knew that Hobbs Point held some really big fish, but this was the first time that I experienced them up close and personal.

    My wife was using a 5 inch weighted DOA Bait Buster, a pattern of a finger mullet, that my cousin from Texas had left behind the week before. She had cast directly ahead of our boar, as I was getting another DOA shrimp to put on my heavier rod when I heard her call out…Michael … Michael, I have something really big on this time. Whatever she had on, swam straight out into the deeper water of the little bay east of the shoreline. This was a good thing as I could follow the fish and give guidance to my wife on how to fight it. She wanted to hand me the rod, and I said NO…it’s your fish…you fight it. Now my wife could generally out-fish me on any given day and today was looking like that “Any Given Day” was happening. I looked at my watch when that big fish hit, which was around 1:30 pm. The big fish ran a lot of line off the reel which made me very nervous. The reel she was using was rated for 6- pound test line and she wanted me to put 8- pound test mono on the night before. I had some 8-pound line used as backing but had tied a 6-pound line on top to the reel's capacity, which was less than 100 yards using a 6-pound line. I took off the 6-pound line and tied on a new 8-pound mono upper section using 2 uni-knots. I have always made it a habit of tying a double surgeon's knot at the very end of the line as a stop knot and then tie my normal knots for the leaders or hooks/lures etc.

It's just a margin of safety in not having a knot completely slip off the tag end of the line. So here I am watching the uni-knots go out the rod tip and back on the reel several times during this epic battle, and hoping all along that those knots were going to hold up. The big fish decide to just rest on the bottom and not move, which had me a bit baffled as to what it was. We were 40 minutes into this fight and have not seen this fish yet. I kept telling her to not let any slack get into the line and keep the pressure on the fish. When the big fish decided to sit on the bottom and rest, my wife didn’t know what to do. So I went forward and told her to pull real tight and I reached over and plucked the line, which sends a vibration down the line to the fish and it took off again. We ended up over a quarter of a mile away from where the fish had first struck. It was now 60 minutes into the fight when I finally saw that it was another huge snook well over 40 inches. A few minutes later the fish was boat side and I managed to get the head and front belly of it into the landing net and got it into the boat. It was a big female. I held it up for my wife to get a couple of photos while I quickly got out my measuring tape and measured 43 inches in length and 26 inches in girth. I then got her back into the water. I held her by the mouth and got the trolling motor going forward slowly. It took about 10 minutes to revive her until she was ready to swim off on her own.

    We broke out those 2 beers in the cooler and headed to the boat ramp and home. Once I got the chance, I ran the measurement numbers of that big snook and came up with an estimate of 36.34 pounds. That was an epic battle for that size of fish on only 8-pound test mono in any book

    

    After a couple of months had passed, I decided to surprise my wife and have a replica fiberglass mount made of her snook for her Christmas present. I went to my local tackle store, in which I knew the owner, and asked him who he could recommend in making the mount. He said the only place he has his client’s mounts done was in Naples, Florida, and in fact, that company had an exhibit at that weekend's expo in our town. So I went to the expo and looked at some of their display mounts and found that this company did excellent work, and especially in the very details in the painting of the mount. I went back to my friend and asked if he would place the order and gave him the dimensions and the photo for coloration. I asked if this mount would be ready by Christmas. He said no problem and even gave me his discount. On Christmas morning I got up around 2 am and slipped quietly out to the living room and removed 2 of the duck mounts and got the fish out and hung it above the fireplace on the wall mollies that I installed earlier that day while my wife was at work. I went back to bed and got up when she did as asked her to make coffee. It took her a while to notice the snook… all was well that Christmas Day.

    Sadly, I would lose my fishing partner 10 years later to lung cancer, but every day I look up at that snook mount and remember that day as if it was yesterday.

  There is a lesson to be learned from this true story….always listed to your fishing partner…especially if it is your wife… who is the better fisherwoman.

Spear-fishing Giant Jewfish (Goliath Grouper)

    This is a series of three related stories that took place in the 60s when I was 16 years of age and dumb enough to try almost anything. I met my then soon-to-be diving partner at a boat ramp on a freshwater lake where he was water-skiing with his girlfriend at the time. She didn’t know how to drive a boat very well and he asked me if I did…and I did. I said that I have my own skis at home a couple of blocks away. Thor was his name, tossed me his car keys, and said go get them. Now we just met and the trust was already quite evident, something that would be unheard of today. Thor didn’t even ask my age or if I had a driver's license. So I went and got my skis and returned and began towing Thor around the fairly large lake…then he towed me around and so started a friendship. He was about twice my age and single and was a chiropractor (bone bender).

    Thor was a very good free-diving spearfisherman. He had represented the USA in several competitions on the island nation of Malta. So I had my work cut out for me if I was going to dive with this guy. Thor free-dove easily to 80 feet spearing large groupers. My first hand encounter with this kind of diving was on a trip with Thor and 4 other divers, three of which had represented the USA in free-diving spearfishing events, one of them was the captain of the team. 

    The waters off the east coast of Florida back then were nearly gin clear. When I followed the divers into the water and saw one dive down 60 feet I knew I was in deep trouble. I had no idea that it was that deep. All I could do was watch from the surface and learn in the hopes that one day I could make it down that deep. I think that I had only made it down to about 20 feet that first day.

    So we can fast forward to the title of this story…Goliath Grouper…these are very large fish. The first trip to the reefs off West Palm Beach, Florida was an ill-fated attempt at spearing these huge fish, some of which went well over 400 pounds. We lost all of our spears right out of the gate and had not one single fish to show for our efforts. So we went back home empty-handed on that first trip and stayed up nearly all night re-rigging much heavier spears. The spear tip was about 6 inches long with 10 feet of 1/8 inch stainless steel cable, tied to 30 feet of 3/4"hemp rope. The spear is only used to send the spear point into the fish. I was the rope man on this 2-man team. Thor would dive down and I would follow off to one side. When he fired his CO2 spear gun, I would immediately drop all of the rope except what was around my wrist. I would swim up to the top of the reef and find a large rock to tie the rope off quickly in an attempt to slow down these groupers on their first run to escape us when speared.  Once the fish was restrained and had nowhere to go, Thor would spear the fish again to kill it, and then we would drag it over to the boat. This team operation worked to perfection, well most of the time. There was at least one time when I couldn't find a large rock to tie off to and went for an underwater ride.

    So now let me set the stage for what began a bit earlier that morning. We started off in much shallower water to spear smaller Goliath Groupers of up to 100 pounds. The larger fish were out in a little deeper water. There were 5 divers and Spooky, Thor’s dog on this rather smallish all open16-foot boat. We had boated about 8 or 10 smaller fish and then went on the hunt for the “BIG BOYS”. We found the same exact ledge as the previous day. This reef formation was so large that you could drive a truck thru it and out the other side. It was like 2 reefs with a large cap over the top of both sides. There were deep caves that went back into each reef section. From the water's surface, it was about 10 feet down to the top of the reef and another 15 feet down to the sand bottom. When you dove down to the bottom you could see all the way out the other side, and the huge Goliath Grouper were stacked under that ledge like a stack of cordwood ready for the fire. You could easily count 8-10 fish at any one time, and they were not much afraid of divers.

    So Thor and I accounted for 2 fish in the 350-pound range. The other 2 divers each had one fish in the 250-pound range. Now the bottom of the boat was already covered from side to side with smaller fish and you had to walk between them to try and boat your fish. Those Big Boys took 4 divers working together to boat these fish. We were now nearly swamped, as we probably had close to about 1200 pounds of fish in the boat, and one diver was still missing. We no sooner got that last fish in the boat when I heard a holler for help. About 25 yards away was the lost diver pulling what looked like the Titanic on the water's surface. It was with no doubt the largest Goliath Grouper I have ever seen. He shot it literally with a 12 Ga powerhead 3 times before subduing it. This fish was close to 10 feet long and nearly half that wide in the middle, and most probably weighed well over 900 pounds. NOW WE WERE IN BIG TROUBLE !!!  All five of us slipping and sliding on Jewfish slim trying to get a foothold to grab ahold of this massive fish in an attempt to bring it abroad on a boat already on the verge of sinking. We tried for over 30 minutes to get the fish’s head over the side of the boat and then let the waves slide it into the boat, which worked well for the other large fish but it was not happening on this day. We had to continuously run the bilge pump just to keep ahead of the water that was coming into the boat from the waves every time we tried to boat the "Titanic". Then one of the divers grabbed a knife and jumped over the side and gutted the fish right then and there, while in the midst of sharks swimming around the boat…and boy! did we draw those sharks in with the guts of that fish.

     We hadn’t noticed much about a boat circling around us all the time we were trying to boat that huge fish. It wasn’t until nearly 8 years later at a spearfishing convention in Miami that we saw ourselves on the big screen. That boat had been filming our previous actions of boating… or trying to boat that huge fish… Everyone in that auditorium gasped at what they were seeing on the big screen. There were only three of us in that room that was on that trip. We were introduced to the audience as the divers on that boat. The guy that did the filming that day didn’t even know we were in that audience. When we finally got that fish aboard, we only had about 4 inches of gunnel above water and we still needed to navigate thru a treacherous inlet to get back to the boat ramp. The tide was a strong out-going and the wind was from offshore making for a dicey situation. The 70 HP motor was wide open and we were only making a couple of feet forward movement at a time. The tide would pull us back a couple of feet and the wind and the motor would move us forward a few more feet. The wind would build a big 3-foot high wave above the motor that broke just behind the motor pushing us forward at a very slow pace. We all had our fins and masks on and I had a hold of Spooky in case we went under. It seemed like an eternity before we made it to calmer water. We pulled over to a shallow flat and gutted all the fish one by one to help lighten up the load in the boat. We still needed to get this barge up on the trailer and out of the boat ramp. To say we drew a crowd would be an understatement. The little Dodge Valiant with its 6-cylinder engine was no match for the enormous weight it was trying to pull against. It took 2 pickup trucks in a tandem pull hooked up to our car to get this over-weighted boat out of the water and on flat land. The tires were nearly flat and luckily one of the pickup trucks had a 12-volt air pump so we could get the tires back up to looking like they might make the 65-mile trip back home.

    To give you an idea about those sharks I mentioned…one of the 300-pound fish had a double half-circle bite mark into the side of its body. I could insert my entire finger into the tooth hole. That bite mark measured 14 inches wide by over 12 inches high….that, my friend was a very very large shark indeed. We figured that it might have been from a large female Tiger shark that has been sighted in that area.

    We were well exhausted at this point but needed to make it back to the fish house to sell our fish. We called the owner but said we wouldn’t be able to get there before 11pm. He met us and we unload all but that largest fish. The fishmonger said that he could not sell a fish that large…his cut-off weight was around 400 pounds and our two just made it. It was a good payday but now we had to ice down “Ole Brutus” for the night. I got the honor of coming back the next day to fillet that big boy out. Next door to Thor’s chiropractic office was an English couple that had a little hole-in-the-wall restaurant that had fish and chips every Friday afternoon. So I filleted that fish and cut it up into 6-inch square chunks and wrapped it in freezer paper and put it in my parent's home freezer. We sold that restaurant all of that fish, which took some time. The fillets were over 5 feet long by 3 feet wide by 18 inches thick. I had never before or have ever since filled a fish that large.

    

    

    

    

    To give you a little more perspective on just how large this fish was, the above photo of our second trip, shows all of those fish were about 2 feet below the limb of the tree where the block and tackle was located. In order to get this big 900 pound fish out of the boat, we backed the boat in under the block and tackle, and with three of us pulling on the rope to try and hoist the fish up and out of the boat. We were outweighed and the fish settled back down into the boat and we were all hoisted off the ground by the sheer weight of that fish. We had to bring in another vehicle with a trailer hitch and tied the rope to the hitch and pull the fish up as high as it would go and then pull the boat out from under the fish. The entire tail of the fish was about 2 feet on the ground. I measured that limb the next day and it was 9.5 ft from the ground. This was indeed a really large fish and I am so sorry that we didn't get to photograph it. I did manage to get my parents camera to photograph our second trip. The story on that trip is below.

    The third part of this related story on these giant fish stems from my conversation with my Uncle Martin, an Ole Georgia Cracker farm boy that moved to Miami back in the 50s. My conversation went something like this: I told him the story about our second trip and the amount of fish we brought back home. I then said that I bet you (uncle) that I can put more fish in your boat than you ever imagined, and you will have to say “STOP”…or I will pay for the entire trip. Now being an Ole Georgia Cracker farm boy, Uncle Martin didn’t think this was possible as he didn’t get to see the fish of the second trip since we sold all but one of them, and he never saw the big one I had to fillet. So Uncle Martin had no idea what he was in for when he took on my bet. 

    So the follow-up third trip included Uncle Martin, Uncle Chester (Junior), my Dad with Thor, and I doing the diving. So once again we have 5 grown men…no dogs this time, in about the same size boat with maybe a bit higher sides but only half the HP (35 HP) in the motor. We started off much the same as the previous trip in shallower water for smaller fish and worked our way south for the larger fish. We found the same ledge/reef formation and anchored up on top of the reef. On this trip, I made 12 Ga shotgun power heads for our spearguns. This takes all the extra work out of having to subdue these huge fish with ropes…the 12 GA does all the work. We dove in tandem…Thor dives down and I stay up on top to watch his back. When he starts back up, I then begin my dive down…kinda like having eyes in the back of your head for those sharks that I had mentioned on the previous trip.

    So Thor dives down and bangs the first fish and I helped him get it up to the surface and we swim it over to the boat. We had the Bowery Boys hand us a piece of anchor rope to put through the fish’s mouth and out the gill plate and then handed the rope back up to the “workers”. They had the job of figuring out how to get those fish up and into the boat…we offered little help as there was really no room for 5 of us. So we hoped that they would figure it out before the next fish was ready to be brought in. I wanted my uncle to fully appreciate the moment before he would eventually holler "STOP". Thor and I swam back to the ledge and I started my dive down to where there was a small canyon cut into the reef bottom. I saw a very large fish moving at a high rate speed down in the canyon heading towards the ledge. I swung my gun right over the top of the head of the fish and fired. When the bubbles cleared from the shotgun shell blast, the fish was upside down on the sandy bottom…” Dead-Fish”. I swam over and grabbed it and hauled it up to the surface, all on one breath of air. Thor showed up to help at the right moment. Good thing for the buddy diving system, as I was rapidly running out of air in my lungs. I hadn't realized that this fish was as large as it was because I didn’t see all of it. I only mainly saw it from the top. Well, this one was over 400 pounds. Oh No!!! I hope that I don’t have to fillet another big one again.

    When we got that fish back to the boat, we again ask for the rope. Uncle Martin is now beginning to sweat a bit and my other uncle and my Dad are dumbfounded at what they are seeing, as we already have nearly 700 pounds of fish in the boat. So back we go for one more fish. I thought that this one might do it for Ole Uncle Martin. Thor dives down on another fish and bangs him back up under the ledge. As he was coming up he signaled me of a fish on the bottom. I dive down and swim under the ledge and grab the fish by the gill plate and start back up when Thor comes back down to help me. We swim that fish over to the boat and we didn’t have to say a word. The boys just handed us a rope in total amassment. We began to swim off and reloaded the powerheads and we were just about to swim back over to the ledge, thinking that my uncle would be giving me the high sign any minute now.  Just then we heard hollering and looked back to see this last 300 pound fish somehow had come back to life after a shotgun blast to the head and was trying to swim back down to the bottom with these 3 men hanging onto the rope. The side of the boat is tipping over nearly to the point of taking on water over the side. We quickly swim back over and I hit the fish with a second 12 GA power head right in the top of the fish’s head. Now when one of these 12 Ga. power heads goes off underwater, there is a large amount of gas released that blows back out of the fish as air bubbles…a lot of bubbles. So you don’t see very much right away until all of the bubbles clear. OK! He looks dead to me, and we needed a rest from this non-stop action. So Thor and I get in the boat and help pull that fish into the boat. About 5 minutes later this fish comes back to life again, slapping his huge tail right against the motor control cables, knocking them completely off the motor. We can’t shoot the fish in the boat with a power-head as we would blow a hole in the bottom taking us down to visit with “Ole Davey”. So a sharp knife into the brain did him in for the last time, hopefully.

    Did I hear my uncle say “ STOP"? Yep! Ole Uncle Martin had just about seen enough…you win. The entire back of his boat up to and in between the seats was wall-to-wall fish slim and huge basking bodies of Goliath Grouper...back then we called the Jewfish. We got the cables back onto the motor and made a slow... very slow return trip back to the boat ramp. It was all that motor could do was keep us moving forward at a snail's pace. Thankfully we didn't have the same problems with the tide and wind as we did on the second trip and in getting the boat out of the water, but my uncle's truck had all it could handle with getting this load out and back home. 

    We did manage to make it back home but it was late, so we had to ice down the fish for the night as we could not get in touch with our fishmonger until the next day. We did gut the fish before we left for home and put ice blocks in the cavities to keep them from spoiling. We decided to do a photoshoot with some of these fish as we didn't have the chance to do so on the second trip. The next morning I borrowed my uncle's truck and we loaded the fish in two truckloads to our favorite fishmonger, but we had to do some sweet talking to get him to buy my oversized fish the next day. Three of the fish were just barely under his size limit and my last one was OK. It was a good thing that he made a call to New York to confirm that they would take all of our fish. I did not want to fillet over 1200 pounds of fish. I found out that the fishmonger makes 8-foot-long insulated plywood boxes to transport the fish to the train railway depot for the train transport to New York. So the magic number is not the weight of the fish so much as it is the length of the fish. New York wants the heads left on the fish as there is very desirable meat in the head, cheeks, and throat for making fish stews.

    Back in those days, I was not a photographer, but I did manage to get a few images of what these huge fish looked like. The photo above with my cousin and my baby brother was of this last “Stop Enough, Uncle” trip. The other photos were of some other trips that year in Key West, Florida. I could barely lift that 200 pounder below. I had shot that fish with my co2 speargun earlier that morning and that fish broke the cable mount on the front of my speargun taking the stainless spear and cables. Later that afternoon I saw this fish trying to hide under a ledge and speared it with my rubber band speargun. It was a good thing I had a breakaway security rope coiled up under the gun and tied to my wrist as this fish made a back door exit taking the speargun with him. He made it about 10 feet before I stopped him. And yes he still had my other spear and line stuck in him.

The three of us divers accounted for over 500 lbs of fish on that trip and sold them at the local fish house. This paid for the entire trip for that weekend and had a few bucks in our pockets.

The diving in general back in the early 60s was such that just Thor and myself on a one day local trip to the reefs could spear about 200 to 250 lbs of assorted fish. We sold all of those fish every weekend we dove to the local colored folks on our way back home. The fine folks just loved it when I got up in the boat as Thor drove down the neighborhood streets and I would yell "Fresh Fish". 

    

    

Thor and I also hunted ducks in the winter, and that winter was when my horrific auto accident happened. On December 24,1961 about 12 noon, was when a car came up from behind and ran into the back of a car that I was getting out of on Tamiami Trail, 50 miles west of Miami. The person at fault didn’t even know that we were stopped just off the edge of the road. She plowed into us going over an estimated 70 MPH, completely destroying both vehicles and leaving a hole in the asphalt that was 13 feet long and 10 inches deep. The battery in her car was found 300 feet down the road from the impact point. It went thru the hood of her car like it was shot out of a canon. The car I was getting out of struck me, sending my limp body ahead of it and down the canal embankment, and then proceeded to run over me on its way into the canal. That driver was unhurt. The two women in the other car were hurt somewhat but not nearly as bad as I was. I had broken my back in 20 places, broken ribs, small bones at the base of my lower back, as well as twisting and shifting the spinal column. My right femur was completely broken in 3 places. The doctors didn’t think that I had much of a chance to live through that kind of trauma, as internal organs were also heavily traumatized. They said that even a medium build person would not have made it through that kind of impact and trauma. I guess playing football and all of that diving is what might have initially saved me, but I believe that it was through the grace of My Heavenly Father, God Almighty, and my Guarding Angel.  I was told by the doctors that it would be over 12 months before I could walk again and even that was somewhat doubtful. I said no way was I going to be down and out for that long. I was back up on my feet walking with braces and crutches in just 4 months, however, back surgery for spinal fusion was required 6 months later.

    I never saw much of Thor after that accident. I don’t know if he felt guilty in some way for the accident. Thor wasn’t even there on that duck hunting trip and he never came by to see me when I was home recuperating between trips to the hospital. Sometimes people’s lives and attitudes change for reasons that we will never fully understand. I lived in that same house for another 9 years and yet, Thor never seemed interested in even giving me a phone call just to say Hi. But I forgive him, may he RIP.

The Bimini Trip from Hell

Not all of my boat trips to Bimini have been as bad as this one was, thankfully.

    So arriving at the dock at around 9 am on a beautiful sunny summer morning, I looked around for this 35-foot cabin cruiser that was to be my home for the next 3 days. I asked Roger, my diving partner on this trip, where was the boat?? Roger said right there in front of you. What I saw resembled the boat in the movie, African Queen. The boat was filthy and that was being kind with my words. I came on board and looked down into the cabin and the stench was overwhelming. I asked Roger what in the hell was that odor…he said the dogs. Apparently, Filthy Phil and Horrible Howard had 4 dogs that lived aboard the boat with them somewhere upriver…well beyond the normal beaten path of civilization, I’m sure.

    It was my 16th year that summer when the phone rang at my parent's house. It was Roger, a friend of a friend of a friend. I knew Roger from diving friends and he seemed like a good guy. Roger asked me if I wanted to go spearfishing in Bimini, which is the first of the Bahama Islands about 55 miles off the Miami coast. Never having been there before I said sure what do I need to bring. Roger said a dozen eggs and plenty of diving gear. I said is that all the food I need to bring? That alone should have rung the ole alarm bell, but hey !… I was young and dumb, but a really good spearfisherman. Maybe that was why they wanted me to go along, to be able to bring more fish back home to sell. I asked my parents and said I knew Roger pretty well and indicated what could possibly go wrong on a 35-foot cabin cruiser. OOK!!

    So looking around that foul-smelling cabin I asked how many engines does this thing have and Phil said one flathead 6 cylinder…the one with a plywood box over it right in the middle of the cabin. Well, I immediately knew where I was staying and sleeping on this trip…up on the flying bridge 'wanna-be'. At least it had a top for shade and away from that awful odor. To make matters somewhat discomforting was the fact that both Phil and Howard were busy working on the engine…did I hear that bell ring again??

    It was already getting pretty hot, so I decided to don my swim fins and mask and jump into the water next to the dock…the dock with a sign that indicated “No Swimming”. Phil hollered out…why not clean the bottom of the boat while you’re down there. Oh! This is getting real alright, that bottom had not been cleaned in what looked like several years…probably because the motor never ran. So for the next 2 hours, I scrapped the bottom of the “Garbage Scowl”. Finally, the Filthy Boys said they think they fixed the motor, and let's get started crossing the Gulf Stream. I’m really beginning to have second thoughts about this trip.

    So now it's after 12 noon and we’re just getting started? The tide was going out the Haulover Inlet and the wind was coming in from offshore. This makes for a very dicey wave action of about 5 foot high swells in the middle of the inlet, which by the way is not where you want to steer any boat. You always go off to one side or the other but I guess neither of these two Captains???? knew much about how to handle a boat in that rough of a sea. This once again was probably because that motor never ran much?? So I was ready to abandon ship should she go under before we ever got started on this trip. Damn bells keep going off !!!

    We are now officially on our way... or at least heading east. I think that I may have mentioned something about why we are going so slow?? Phil said that’s all she’s got…” DING”... This is going to be a longggg trip. I guess it was about 4 pm when I heard a loud bang from below me. I was up on the flying bridge where I was stationed for this journey. Something flew past me as it was exiting the roof of the cabin. There was a neat hole about 2 inches in diameter that just missed me about afoot. The motor stopped…I got down from my “Ivory Tower” to see what the hell happened. It turns out that one of the Filthy Boys apparently didn’t tighten the number 4 spark plug well enough, and as it built up cylinder pressure, it loosened the spark plug and it blew right out of the engine and up through the cabin roof, right where I had been sitting. Come-On!.. stop that damn bell from ringing again….this is no longer funny. So I quickly said with great confidence, just put another spark plug in…Phil said I don’t have any spares. OH! Here we go again. Phil said we will just have to continue on and get a plug when we get to Bimini. Now we have heavy exhaust fumes combined with that awful dog smell going on in the cabin. So back up topside where I can at breath get out of the sun…no use burning up before we get there I thought. I fell asleep exhausted from all of the glad tidings of this trip so far…but folks, it’s “NOT OVER”…not by a long shot...read on!.

    When I woke up it was dark-thirty already…Boy, I really needed that rest for sure. I looked out to my right side and noticed a white flashing light about 10 miles away. Thinking to myself that was strange. I had looked at the navigational chart just to be familiar with where we were going. I quickly figured out that we were not going where I thought we were supposed to be going. I didn’t want to alarm anyone but I hollered down for Roger to come topside. When he got up there I asked what was that flashing white light off to our right. I think, not sure, but I think he said “OH SHIT” !!!! Howardddddddd, get that map out. I told you it wasn’t over yet. It would appear that we were ever so slightly off course…by 15 miles !!! We were … in effect heading to England…did I hear that bell ring again??? I’m beginning to feel like a well-beaten prizefighter with all of these bells going off.

    Let's see if I can set this scene for ya … because if I hadn’t actually experienced this, I probably wouldn’t have believed it myself and you all would think that this was a fictional story. Ya see folks, the Gulf Stream has about a 5 mile per hour northerly current, which you have to compensate for when navigating on this water. The fact that we were only operating on 5 cylinders wide open, we didn’t have enough forward speed to offset the current…so we were going more north than east, not by much, but enough over time. I guess it was a good thing I woke up Huh? We hadn’t noticed until the next morning that one of the Filthy Boys threw a metal wrench up on the dash right next to the compass. I did mention the fact that I didn’t think these two were…. ah … very good captains??? It's a wonder that compass didn’t have us heading back to Miami. You just don't put anything that is metal next to a navigating compass...first order of captainship, which I had already mentioned that these two didn't have. I may have only been 16 years old at the time but I do know a few things about boatsmanship.

    We were in an area called the Bermuda Triangle or Devil's Triangle where the mysterious disappearance of a squadron of Navy Pilots known as Flight 19 went missing in December of 1945…I could relate to that, as we were in that same boat…no pun intended here. Soo many planes and boats have slipped away to meet up with Ole Davey, and I was hoping that we were not going to join them.

    So Captain Bligh (Filthy Phil) turns the boat south and heads for the lighthouse … the one that marks the north edge of the Bahama Channel that the cruise ships navigate by,... you know the one that leads to England? At this point, I was praying for a cruise ship to come by. We ran until about 4 am passing that lighthouse close off our port side and dropped anchor to wait for sunrise so we could go into Bimini to get spare parts…I was hoping for a new motor or better yet a new boat. Daybreak hit with a loud sound of waves crashing on rocks…folks, you just don’t mistake that sound. I looked out and said thank you, Lord. What I saw was a very large pile of boulders and rocks sticking up out of the water about 20 feet away from the boat. These series of rocks piles make up small islands just a hundred yards offshore. We were anchored between the shore and those rocks. Of course, we never knew they were there….there were no lights on this boat to see them silly... why would I even think that this garbage scow would have lights. So we dodged yet another bullet in the long line of artillery shells on this trip. We very well could have piled up on those rocks and sunk…come to think of it that would not have been so bad after all as things were only going to get much worse… read on and you'll see.

    So I jumped into the gin-clear water thinking that it was only 10 feet deep.. it was more like 30 feet. Roger handed me my diving equipment and my CO2 gas spear gun and a couple of free spears (no line attached). I dive down on this nice fat 50lb. Nassau Grouper and fired. The gas bubbles never stopped..the pressure chamber jammed open and ran out all of my bullets (gas)….Yep! that's the end of this gun for this trip. One dive, one grouper for the box. Hey! at least I’m batting a thousand....so far at least.

    After eating up all of the eggs on the first morning…no one else brought any eggs and actually not much of anything else to eat either. Roger must have had his wires crossed up on the food supply...go figure!  I guess Roger figured we would live off the reef so to speak. It's not like I haven't done that before.

    So now we head down to the channel that leads into the Bimini Harbor and the docks. Horrible Howard mentions to Roger for he and I to stay down below in the cabin out of sight. The Filthy Boys failed to mention that Neither Roger nor I were ever listed on the boat’s travel manifest when we left Miami. So now we were official "Stow-Aways” and “The Boys” didn’t want to pay duty on us in Bimini… Now, what a pleasant surprise that was. Let me say this…it really takes a lot to get me mad at anything at that young tender age, but I was getting heated…mutiny had crossed my mind several times over and I think Ole Roger wasn’t too far behind me. If that boat had been more seaworthy I’m sure we would have agreed to toss the Filthy Boys over the side, cut our losses and head home right then and there.

    I think the 'Boys' found a rusty old spark plug that they cleaned up to get the motor running, well, better than it was before… which wasn’t saying much, to begin with. We un-docked and headed south away from prying eyes and the head tax collector on our bodies. I spent the next two days using my Hawaiian-Sling-type spear gun, which I preferred anyway. I have killed fish well over 100 lbs with it and was deadly accurate with it. So the fish box was beginning to fill up with Roger and I spearing fish throughout the days and grabbing lobster ( Florida Crayfish for you northerners ) late in the afternoon for dinner. Phil and Howard were as useless as tits on a boar hog when it came to fishing/diving. Actually, I’m not quite sure just what the hell they would have been good at.

    On our last night, hopefully, we anchored the boat up on the shallow-water part of the Bahama Bank in about 8 feet of water. Of course, there was only one anchor, so properly anchoring up for swing tides was impossible. Around 2 am I felt a bump in the bottom of the boat…we were hitting the bottom when the tide went out and the water depth was now only 2 feet or less. We tried to start the engine to motor out to deeper water but when the motor was put into forward gear the motor suddenly stopped…this wasn’t good. Roger and I had to get into the water and pull on the anchor rope to get the boat into deeper water for the remainder of the night. When it was light enough to see underwater I went over to see what was stopping the motor when put in gear. Well, Folks, the Gremlins are now swarming. Ya see there is this very heavy thick metal plate that bolts onto the hull to protect the propeller. This plate was about 4 inches wide and about 1 inch thick and was bent up into the propeller after beating against the bottom. This boat is going nowhere unless we can find a way to bend that bar out of the way to clear the propeller. Of course, there is not one single heavy hammer on board this boat.  So I took my weight belt which has three four-pound lead weights on it and made a makeshift hammer.  I would repeatedly take a deep breath, go under the boat, and pound on that bar to free up the propeller. Roger helped some but it took me a couple of hours with no help from the peanut gallery (Phil and Howard), but I prevailed and we were up and running once again and headed back to the docks at Bimini Harbor and the “Tax Collector”.

    Roger and I were once again asked to stay below deck while the Filthy Brothers filed the papers to leave Bimini. Another thought came to mind…If we were not listed on the boat’s manifest leaving the US then that meant that we would not be cleared back into the US and would be considered illegal stow-aways.???? REALLY ???  Of course, Roger and I didn’t stay below deck... we went looking for another ride back to the US. We were in NO WAY going back on that boat. We found a couple that felt sorry for us and our story and they let us aboard their boat. The last report Roger had heard, Phil and Howard broke down again halfway across the Gulf Stream and drifted about 125 miles to the north at Vero Beach, and were picked up by the Coast Guard and towed in.

    I’m writing this story some 60 years later and I can vividly remember every minute moment about this trip. The Good Lord was watching over Ole Roger and I…this time. I never found out much more about the Filthy Brothers…I’m sure they sank somewhere in the mangrove islands they called home. I kinda felt sorry for those poor ole dogs though...even though they stank.

Beached by the Storm from Hell

Well, folks, as with nearly all of my Photo Adventures in mind, this one had its moments for sure, but at least this time the disaster portion of it was nearly at the end of the trip. Although I decided to leave early due to the extenuating circumstances, I had originally planned on a 4 or 5-day photo trip with my boat down to the Everglades Ten Thousand Islands to camp, fish, and of course to photograph.

The endless waterscapes and pristine white sandy beaches abound everywhere, but ya need a boat to get there and to get around. I had my 17-foot center console Blue Wave Blue Skiff, powered by a 70 HP 2-stroke Yamaha, a great combination capable of speeds exceeding 40 mph in a light chop. This boat has a lot of room, plenty of deck and floor space, and 2 large dry storage lockers to keep my equipment dry from a heavy downpour should that occur. The deck is self-bailing so not much of a worry there about sinking the boat and it was also equipped with an auto bilge pump for those unattended nightly storms that will come up in a hurry.

On this camping trip, I bought my 8'x10' dome tent, and a double size air mattress, and a sleeping bag. I even brought my porta potty since I had plenty of room in the boat. I had a 2'x4' table, 2 burner camp stove, and all of the cooking utensils needed for this trip, and of course my trusty aluminum coffee pot that I have had for nearly 45 years. I brought my 40-quart cooler, a camp chair, and a 10'x20' plastic tarp with 6 pieces of 1/2"x10' long PVC pipes that I made into a Quonset type rain/shade fly and a ton of rope. So you can see I was loaded with everything I needed for a comfortable 4-5 day camping trip.  I had no shortage of camera equipment as well.

My camera bag was pretty well stuff. I had 3 canon camera bodies, 4 canon lenses, 2 tripods, and all of the goodies that could be stuffed into that bag. I even had my 400 watt 12 V power inverter to recharge camera batteries and lights. The island that I choose to camp on was hopefully going to provide a perfect set up for camping with some shade trees and a suitable place to work from as well as some interesting shoreline features for shooting the Milky Way, even though it was in a full moon cycle. Now, normally the full moon phase is not desirable for shooting Milky Way landscape scenes because of the brightness of the moon. However, there is a very good time to do so and that is just before the moon is setting. The moonlight at that point is not too excessively bright and in some circumstances may add a warm color cast to the foreground. In my case, the two mornings that I did have to shoot, was around 5 am. The moon was setting in the west and the Milky Way was still above the southeastern horizon. This gave me about an hour to photograph the Milky Way. Since all of the Milky Way photography was done on the same stretch of island beach that I was camping on, I didn’t need to run my boat in the darkness. Even if I had wanted to do so, I could not as the boat was sitting high and dry on the sandy bottom of the flat at this 5 AM low tide. 

So day one was getting there and setting up my camp for the week. It was late in the afternoon by the time everything was in place and since it was low tide, I decided to just enjoy the warm orange glow of the afternoon’s sunset. I woke up that first morning, day two, beating my alarm by an hour. I looked out the tent window at some very bright stars overhead. Since I had plenty of time, I got up and made coffee and just admired what looked like heaven to me with the bright yellow colored moon slowly dropping over the horizon. It appeared more like a sunset as opposed to a moonset. The sandy beach was now much wider due to the extreme low tide and the dead trees that covered the islands, just standing there ready to be foreground elements for photographing the Milky Way. Many of these dead trees were the results of the many hurricanes that have ravaged these islands over the years. 

After the rising sun began to fill the sky with light the Milky Way photography was over for day one. After the tide came in and floated my boat, I was now ready to do some exploring my surrounding area of the many islands that make up the Ten Thousand Islands. The photography waterscapes images were endless with white sandy beaches on nearly every island and the best part of this trip...no people! I have learned one thing over the many years of photographing and that is to go in the middle of the week...not on weekends. I was hoping for bright white puffy clouds to fill the sky for both color and B&W infrared photography, but this is still wintertime, the first part of February to be exact. Our weather fronts here move in and out dragging those clouds further south.

The summer months would have been better, but then the no-can-sees and mozzies would have been horrendous. That future photo adventure will have to wait until later in the year. The benefit of summer would be better cloud formation during the day, the Milky Way would be more visible during the later summer months and the bugs would be at their best as well...more bug juice, please. 

The small tidal flat directly out in front of my campsite had some interesting, but small in size, reef material scattered about with patches of white sandy bottom. A few times I had to walk across this hard material to get to my boat and reposition it back over the sandy bottom. I didn’t really want to walk on the small corals, oysters, and sponge material if need be. However I did, and I cut up my feet on those sharp oysters, right through my crocks. 

So now day two was not without some consequences...which is normal for me. Day two came to a close with a beautiful sunset. All sunsets are beautiful, some are just better than others. However, a few more clouds would have been very appreciated. Day three started out much the same, getting up in time to photograph the last stages of the setting moon...after coffee of course. Then I walked further down the beach to find new and more interesting dead trees and tidal flats with pockets of water for some Milky Way reflections... something everyone should experience at least once in their lives. You can really appreciate seeing the Milky Way when you are in dark places without the glow of far away city lights.

I had chosen my campsite location-based more on the prevailing wind direction to be able to have some air flowing through the tent. I needed a location that had some trees in which to tie ropes to hold up my Quonset style sunshade tarp. I knew that there might be a chance for a weak cold front to move through the area late Wednesday, but not taking my compass or looking at the boat compass when choosing which island I was going to camp on provide to be a big fatal mistake. As it were, the site I choose seemed to be facing SW which is where the winter cold fronts approach from when they get that far south. My wife had called about mid-afternoon informing me of the severity of an approaching storm front and that it was a fast-moving storm. Oh! I said...how fast?...she said it was

moving at about 50 miles per hour with some heavy pockets of rain. I immediately thought about how screwed I was and how was I going to deal with my boat. I only had one anchor with me on this trip, which was adequate for that size of boat in calm water. However, it would not be near enough to handle 40-50 MPH winds, especially on an outgoing tide and incoming winds. I waded out again and repositioned the boat a bit closer to the beach in a shallow sandy area, hoping the tide would recede faster than the approaching storm. If the boat was to sit on the sandy bottom, then I only had to contend with the waves and water getting in the boat, which the bilge pump would pump it back out.

 

I set the anchor out with all the remaining rope I had left and stood on it to drive the flukes deeper into the sand. I now could only hope that it would hold. This was about 5 PM. I went back to the tent to lie down and rest the OLE Bones.

A bit later and approaching dark thirty, I could hear the boat hitting on the coral bottom. So out I go again and reposition the boat back to where I originally anchored it. I then noticed the immensity of the storm... it was massive, covering the sky with inky black...no clouds just pure black, from the West on my right around to the South in front of me. The storm was coming around the south side of Marco Island, the last of the landmass between it and where I was camping. 

This storm was now heading directly towards my location. Lighting was flashing on both sides of me. It was still a bit far off in the distance, but I knew it was still too close for me to be standing knee-deep in the water. I decided to move my boat into much deeper water so I waded out to armpit depth and reset the anchor again. I didn't want my boat to be pounding on that hard bottom. By the time I got out of the water and walked up the beach, the gale force winds hit like a ton of bricks, followed by the pelting rain. As I approached my tent I could see it leaning heavily to the side. It was a good thing I had all of those ropes tied to the trees, as they were the only things keeping everything intact. I made it under the tarp and sat down in the chair with my back to the storm. I was wrapped in the tarp and just had to wait out whatever was to happen. I had an ominous feeling that the tent was going to be wet inside, and it was, along with the bedding.

These lightweight tents are OK in light rain but not with those kinds of winds. When the side walls touch anything on the inside it creates a point in the fabric where water enters. I thought that I had most of everything moved to the center of the tent, but when it finally blew overall bets were now off. I reset the tent ropes and poles to upright the tent again but noticed that 2 of the fiberglass support poles were broken, and suddenly a strong gust of wind blew it down along with the tarp I put up over the table and camp stove. My campsite now looked like a war zone. When I was finally able to get inside the tent and moved the wet stuff to one side and turned the air mattress over...I found part of the bedding that was not wet and pulled it over me and said good night.

That storm did move through fast, but it really made a total mess of my campsite and much more as I was later to find out. I got up the next morning to find my boat further up on the beach than I had hoped for. In fact, it was up very high and dry. When I got to it, the back half of the boat was full of water, which should have drained out thru the above deck transom holes, but didn't. I had to open the floor access cover hatch over the bilge pump in order for the water to drain down into the bottom of the hull and turn on the pump. It took about 10 minutes to pump out the water. It was still somewhat low tide but the winds were blowing the tide in quicker than normal.

No time for coffee this morning. I packed everything up as quick as I could and stowed it in the boat. I then sat in my chair and waited for the tide to come in and back up the beach so that I could hopefully get the boat floating again. I had nearly fallen asleep sitting there when I felt the bow of the boat begin to move. Now its time to get to work, or so I thought. It took another hour before the water and waves began to move the stern of the boat but still not near enough to do much in the way of moving it to deeper water. So now I thought that if I could swing the bow of the boat towards the waves and incoming tide, it would rock the stern loose. Well, that didn’t go as planned. Instead, the waves seemed to be getting much higher with the wind. The boat was now pointing downhill towards the water with the bow much lower than the stern. It didn’t take more than a couple of those high waves breaking over the bow to again fill the boat with water.

I was doomed again and was not going to catch any break this morning for sure. The tide was now beginning to recede but the waves were still dumping water into the boat. The only good thing...it was flowing out as fast as it was coming in. Everything was soaked with some stuff underwater and some items floating around in the front of the boat. My good tarpon fly reel and rod were under...the cooler was floating as was the front dry box. The rear dry box where my camera equipment was stored was sliding into the water. I was able to get it back up to the high side and tie it off. I then began moving everything out of the boat and back up on dry land. Once that was done all I could do at this point was to sit and wait for the tide to fall and the waves to subside. I now had to resort to calling in the rescue crew...my brother-in-law. After an hour or so the tide was much lower and the waves were not coming into the boat, so I began to bail the water out. I had bailed about half of the water out when I heard a boat and looked up to see my brother-in-law and his son coming to my rescue.

Pulling beached and sandbar stuck boats was nothing new to them and they seemed not too concerned that my boat was on total dry land and the shallow water was about 5 feet from the bow of my boat. They helped bail the remaining water out of the deck while the bilge pump took care of the water down in the hull. I kept thinking we would have to wait for high tide again but they knew a nifty trick. Being mullet fishermen and having a mullet skiff, a type boat where the motor is as far in the front of the boat as it can be. It is called a tunnel hull. They just got up as close as they could float their boat and tied onto my bow eye and put their boat in gear with about half throttle and just waited.

I had no idea what they were waiting for but in a matter, a just a few minutes, my boat began to inch forward and then shot forward and was now floating again. The water from their boat's motor washed down the tunnel and washed the sand out from under my boat until it created a huge hole under my boat. The next wave did the rest. I was very impressed, to say the least by their ability, and the fact that my boat was now afloat again. All that needed to be done to get me off this hell hole was to put everything back into the boat and head back to get my boat back on the trailer and drive back home. 

It has taken me 3 days of soaking all of my camping equipment in freshwater and drying it all out. The boat was full of sand, the tent and tarps were full of sand...everything was full of sand and salt. I had 2 days of photography out of a planned 4 or 5 days but did manage to get a few good images in spite of that Storm from Hell. So...if you ever wonder what professional photographers go through to get those beautiful images you see in magazines, well, now you have at least one idea of what actually goes on in capturing those images.