I flew from DC to Miami early Saturday morning, and proceeded to hop onto a little 18-seater that took me from Miami to Key West. Just as my luck would have it, some woman with a chihuahua in her carry-on was sitting across the aisle from me...and the dog wouldn't STFU. I spent the entire flight thinking of creative ways to use the dog for shark bait, none of which came to fruition.
After landing in Key West and making my way to our hotel, my brother and I went out wandering around. It was around 2 in the afternoon, and already everyone was drunk. Its like a big party down there full of fat/old/stinky/fat white people. Tourists and locals alike, the locals are just more of a wrinkly brown than the beet red of the tourists. Regardless, we stopped and had some burgers and a couple beers. Afterwards we picked up some cigars and walked around some more. Not really a whole lot to see there, just the same tourist trap t-shirt shops all the way down the strip. We ate dinner at the Raw Bar...do NOT get the fried oysters there, they don't clean them well and they taste like fried dung instead. F- at best.
The next day we went out around 7 am for some dolphin fishing. We were on a 27-footer which was really nice. I took the first fish after running for an hour and getting the lines out, probably around 9 am. Ship my first dolphin ever.
My brother and mom took two dolphin each while Dad relaxed on the bow of the boat with a cigar. He was infinitely entertained by the fact that Mom almost got dragged overboard by her fish. We tried some fly fishing for the dolphin since they school up pretty tight and when you hook one, the others follow it to the surface and you can just cast to them. It didn't work.
The dolphin slowed down around 1, and we cruised over to the reef to try and take some grouper or barracuda. Within 10 minutes of setting the lines, I get my first grouper, a fat 20 pounder.
My brother and I each catch a barracuda in short order...they put up absolutely no fight and bringing them in was like reeling a pencil through the water. BORING.
Monday was dedicated to flats fishing. My brother and I went out with our guide around 8 and made a short run to the flats. Sight fishing the flats is so hard, its like looking for a moving shadow in a dark room...all you see are puffs of mud or a shadow cruising across your view. It takes a lot of concentration and is pretty exhausting. We saw one bonefish that got spooked when we cast to it with the fly rod, and we saw a 7 foot lemon shark that bit through our wire leader on the shark rod. Doh.
After going fishless for a few hours, we moved to a different area. Immediately we saw shark fins breaking the surface around us. With the shark rod(an 8-foot custom made spinning rod with 65lb braid and a wire leader baited with a WHOLE FISH) I cast to one of them, and it damn near yanked the rod out of my hands. It took off running and didn't stop for 45 seconds. It was peeling line so fast that there was actually powder coming off of the line as it went off the reel. After the initial run, he went right for about 5 seconds before breaking us off on some coral. Our guide said that he looked like about a 10 footer and had we not broken him off he would have taken an hour at least to land.
My brother proceeded to hang and land a 5 foot nurse shark. It didn't put up too much of a fight but it still is a strong fish and took a good 20 minutes to bring to the boat with our guide polling as fast as he could after it.
We went fishless for another hour or so, and as the tide was going out the water got pretty skinny and our boat got stuck on the bottom. No big deal, our guide just had to get out into the 18 inches of water and push. As he's doing this, I spot a shark ahead of us maybe 200 feet distant. I'm on the bow yelling which direction the shark is going while our guide pushes us towards him. When we're 40 feet away from the shark I toss the fish out there and he just nailed it. He was about 6.5 feet long and about 140 lbs. Holla, my first lemon shark and my personal best fish.
The rest of the trip was pretty uneventful, a bunch of really bad storms rolled in and we couldn't go out the next day. The final day we went out tarpon fishing and got skunked(doh!). My brother caught a nice bonefish but it was raining and I didn't want to get my camera soaked trying to get pics.
Our flats guide was OUTSTANDING. His name was Bo Tucker and he did a fantastic job for us. He's won several local tournaments, and guides for Almost There Charters. He has some really nice rods(GLoomis bonefish and permit rods, Cape Fear tarpon rods, and custom shark rods) and uses Shimano Stradics on everything but the shark rod, which has a heavier reel. Smart guy and very funny to boot.