Avid angler Eric Dupuis – Ottawa SUN’s Advertising Guru – just returned from his Honeymoon in Florida, and has kindly shared some details on an amazing fishing charter he and his wife went-on in the Keys.
Wait, fishing on your Honeymoon??
A tip of the hat to Eric – a true angler!
Here are the pics from the first charter that Bridgit and I did on our honeymoon trip to south Florida.
This charter was out of Key West fishing shipwrecks in the Atlantic Ocean about 7 miles off shore. We booked an 8 hour charter with Captain Paul D’Antoni – his company is called Seize the Day. We generally fished in just over 200ft of water.
We caught a lot of fish as the action was non-stop. We also lost a lot of fish but that is the risk with wreck fishing for fish with sharp teeth. The fish are pretty smart and won’t hit line with leaders.
I ended up catching a 12lbs Barracuda within the first couple of minutes. Bridgit then caught a small Blue Runner which captain Paul then hooked in the back, cast it out and gave me the rod, within seconds 2 huge barracuda grabbed it and I ended up hooking the larger one and it peeled drag out for about 5 minutes. After a long fight I got it up to the boat where captain Paul released it with a long hook-release. He said it was about 30lbs and was one of the biggest barracuda he’d ever seen. Shortly after I caught an 18lbs Amberjack and Bridgit caught one about 10lbs. I also caught a Remora, Mutton Snapper & Silk Shark. Bridgit caught a funky looking grouper and a mangrove snapper. We each caught a silk snapper and about a dozen blue runners.
The fishing wasn’t the only excitement: While driving between wrecks we saw a large Hammerhead shark come up to the surface thrashing it’s head, a sailfish jumped about 5 times and another huge shark come up about 10 feet below the boat on a hunt. He stuck around for a while and was about 300lbs!
It was a great time and the 8 hours flew by!
Eric Dupuis
