Sunday June 18 – Fishing with Captain Frank (American Frank that is.)

The day would end with our crew being dropped off at BIG MUNSON ISLAND so the day had to begin with the packing and final check of all dry bags and snorkel bags for the island. We also had to take off our wrist watches because we were now on ISLAND time. We took our gear to the pagoda next to the docks and then attended flag raising. Before we went to the galley for breakfast, we returned to the pagoda to load our gear onto a Dusky that would drop it off on the floating docks at BIG MUNSON ISLAND.

Captain Frank, skipper of the Dusky Black Fin, suggested we go out and troll for Dolphin Fish. We would need to go out far enough to find floating mats of vegetation or see birds feeding on bait fish at the surface. We went a long way to find both.

The boat ride was an exciting part of the day. The combination of 3 to 4 foot swells, a 250hp outboard motor, a fearless crew and an eager Captain meant the crew had many opportunities to catch air riding in the bow of the boat. The Captain knew he had a crew that could take the ride out to the fish when the youth accused him of missing big waves on purpose. When you hear the outboard motor whine because the prop is out of the water, you know you have caught some air. The only time we would slow down was to let the oil pump keep up with the motor that got a little warm with the water intake being out of the water for large portions of the trip.

Captain Frank put us on Dolphin Fish a.k.a. Mahi-Mahi. Dolphin Fish keepers have to be at least 20 inches long from the tip of the nose to the fork in the tail. We caught five keepers on the day with Kurtice landing 34” and 30” beauties. Everyone caught many Dolphin Fish and had a good time.



After trolling for Dolphin Fish, we spent about an hour reef fishing for snapper. Several Yellow Tail Snapper were caught but none were big enough to keep. Kevin enjoyed chumming during this part of the trip because it made him feel much better. His caring and sensitive crew mates were quick to drop fishing lines into Kevin’s chum stream.



After several radio calls from the Brinton Center asking when we were coming in from fishing, Captain Frank finally called for all lines to be brought in and poles put away. We took a short ride to BIG MUNSON ISLAND. We were only two hours late…