World Fishing Tour March 2008
Well, I certainly put in my time this month, only I was dicked over by the weather as many times as I wasn’t. I had a couple of charters cancelled due to wind (in New Zealand and Australia) and South Florida, while warm, had 25-30 mph winds on more than half of the days I was down here. Wind is a dealbreaker when you want to fish. I’ll fish in the rain, even the snow, but on a really windy day all bets are off, especially if you wanna go out in a boat. This means that I did a lot more fishing than I would’ve liked from piers, seawalls, bulkheads, and docks. Not my preferred style, but you take what you’re given sometime. Highlights were Kingfishing in Australia, Bluefish and Mackerel blitzes in FL. The low point was definitely when I hooked and landed the biggest pompano I’ve ever seen, and I couldn’t get him over the seawall. Here are some pictures of the mixed bag of shit I landed this month. I’m coming home for prime striped bass time, the spring run.



Yellowtail Kingfish caught in Botany Bay—Sydney Australia. This was some of the coolest fishing I’ve ever done. Me and my Captain (Nathan) caught our bait on sabiki rigs and worked around structure all throughout the inlet. We peeled off about 15 yards of line onto the deck and then we would toss the freelined baitfish around buoys and channel markers. When the kingfish took the bait it was an unbelievable fight. They are dirty, rotten, nasty fighters, swimming under the boat around the prop, just fucking awesome shit. I can’t even imagine what a 50lb Kingfish would be like.


Blue Runner, sunrise in Stuart, Fl. These little pricks are fun the first couple of times you catch them on light tackle, and then you start thinking about using them for shark bait. A good looking fish, they put a little bend in the line at least.

A double header, I was having trouble figuring out what the hell was going on as I landed these twins, look at what they did to my hand:


Salmon-Sydney, Australia. A fucking salmon, who knew?

This is almost the exact place where Captain Cook landed in Australia, it is sunset and we are out in the inlet. The swells were pretty nasty as you can see and we were fishing from a small little 22 foot center console. Yikes.

Spanish Mackerel blitz, St. Lucie inlet, FL. This is why I fish, everytime you go out you hope to encounter acres of birds and exploding water. All of the white caps in the water in this picture are Spanish mackerel busting on the surface. I just held up the camera and clicked once before we started in on these fish—it lasted all day. You can see an airborne mackerel in the bottom left part of this frame.


A nice big fat healthy snapper caught off the seawall at sunset in Sailfish Point, FL.

A snook, one of South Florida’s favorite sportfish. I caught this one off a dock around some mangroves around 11pm at night. I have a 30lb snook mounted on my wall at home, caught down here about 10 years ago. This one is much smaller, still one of my favorite fish to target down this way.

My fishing partner for about an hour off a jetty in the St. Lucie inlet, a blue heron. Cool as shit.

I don’t know what the fuck this is, but I sure caught a lot of them. Too many little peckerfish species down in Florida.

The surprise of the trip, I was fishing the St. Lucie River and a school of Bluefish moved in and started breaking off my tackle before I figured out what the hell I was dealing with. Just like Jersey! This lasted a good 2 hours and gave my tackle a nice workout. Anyone who tells you they don’t like catching Bluefish is lying.

Spottail Pinfish, or Porgy, or Spot. AKA bait!

A Bream, an Australian favorite.

Sunrise on Hutchinson Island, Florida. The best time to fish, just me and the dogwalkers.