.I
Date: September 16th, 2015
Time: 6:00 am
Wind: calm
Location: Coimbra Wreck
Bait/Lure: Live snappers and peanut bunker
Fish: 100000000 Mahi
Once in a lifetime! No offense to everyone that I fish with, but I'm thrilled to have shared this day with my wife. I have no idea at how she puts up me.
Started off looking for tuna, as you can see we weren’t able to find any. However, we came across a few things floating that held plenty of mahi.
As the day wore on the wind completely dropped out, and the ocean turned into a lake. Our day was coming to an end. As I started to head back north I spotted a dragger that happened to be close to the course that I had plan to run back to the inlet. I figured this would give us one last shot at a tuna.
As we trolled behind the dragger I saw something odd off in the distance. I grabbed the binoculars and even though I couldn’t really make out what the object was, I was 99% sure it wasn't a boat. At this point it was already 2pm so we decided to pull all the gear in and head over to get a closer look.
Just as we were getting there the commercial dragger had just arrived on the opposite side of the object that we can now clearly tell was a whale.
The crew quickly shouted to us that they had just seen a great white. As we looked down we saw nothing. I quickly grabbed some live bait to see if anything was around. As the live bait hit the water hundreds of mahi started chasing the bait around. Most were on the small size except for one really nice cow. It was impossible to get a bait down to the big mahi. Luckily I had one snapper left. Gina rigged it up and tossed it over. Within 3 seconds Gina was hooked up to the big mahi. After a few jumps, Gina broke her old boat record with a 19.5 pound mahi. She beat the old record by 1/2 a pound.
As great of a feat that is, it would take a back seat to what we were about to see. As we are prepping the fish for the ice we heard a loud thrashing noise. As we turn back we see a GREAT WHITE shark feeding on the whale carcass. We try to get closer but he silently slips away. Bummed that we weren't able to get any footage, enter our consolation prize. It’s a huge TIGER shark. I place the camera under water and get a few seconds of footage as he passes our boat. We are going crazy with excitement.
There are a few other sharks that are circling the boat. They look like either duskys or brown sharks. Once again as we look back at the whale we see a fin. Holy *(&*() it’s coming right at us. Just below the surface as wide as the boat this beast appears. I can't explain just how small I felt on our 28 foot boat. I grab the underwater camera and start filming. As the white turns and heads back to the whale I pray that I was able to capture some of it on film. I DID!
At this point it was already 3:30pm. It was time to head home. However right before we left Gina was able to get a great head shot of the great white feeding on the whale. As I got the boat on plane for the 35 mile run home I couldn’t stop smiling. What we just witnessed was truly a once in a lifetime experience.
A couple of footnotes:
The whale smelled so bad if you were down wind you had to move. Even though the wind was calm there was a certain area by the whale that you could not be near. I'm not kidding you, if we didn’t move the boat we would have thrown up.
Make sure you click on the pictures to enlarge.
The picture in the top right is a tiger shark just below the surface.
The picture of the mahi on the cutting board was taken to show you just how much these fish eat. That squid was taken from its belly. It’s half the size of the fish that ate it.
