Florida Keys Fishing Day 3

Day 3 of my Florida Keys fishing trip started even better than the previous two mornings. The sunrise was fantastic, the weather had warmed up quite a bit, and we were getting ready to go out and pretty much conquer the world! Everything was just falling into place almost better than could be scripted and we were busy making plans for taking our Swordfish to the taxidermist. Thats right, we were headed way offshore to search for Swordfish!

The Swordfish spend the daytime hours down on the bottom of the ocean in 1600 to 1800 feet of water. The technique to catch these fish was really pretty interesting. We used a fancy setup that included a breakaway 10 lb weight, a blinking strobe light, and a whole 16" squid. The electric rod and reel we were using cost more than most gently used cars!! There was over $1000 worth of line on the reel.

Anyhow it would take 8 minutes just to get the bait down to the bottom, we would let it sit there for about 40 minutes, and then it would take 12 minutes to reel it up to check the bait, and start the process all over again. This kind of fishing really could be quite amazing and just a good time out on the water, but not on this day! Here is a pic of a small swordfish that Mike caught just a couple days earlier: By the way, this was just a baby.

On this particular day, the flat calm sees weren't so flat calm out in the gulf stream. In fact, the 1-2 feet waves at the beach turned into 2-4's on the way out. Those waves didnt take long to reach 3-5 foot status, and the 3-5's quickly skipped the 4-6 foot range and turned directly into 6-8's with an occasional 10 footer! Despite the rough seas, we were able to somehow manage 6 full drops before we were physically unable to function any longer.

I have never been so terribly sick in my entire life! Sea sickness is a feeling that I cant even begin to describe how miserable it is. Eating bucketloads of fried chicken, crab claws, and lobster the day before also didnt help out my stomach much. Even from the very beginning of the trip, my stomach was a little uneasy. Once we decided to head back in, we were still over 2 hours away from land. Traveling back through the gulf stream with 10 foot waves was not very pleasant and seemed like an eternity.

I started out the morning at the top of the world, ready to conquer; and came back severely wounded with my tail between my legs!