True to their word, the weather folks got it right today! Almost no wind - the result being that today we traveled in an aquarium on the way to the reef. The water is this picture is about 8 feet deep with the bottom easily visible. Sponges, eagle rays (the ones with spots) and barracuda were easily spotted near the boat.
But first this morning on the agenda was a ride to Kmart and Publix (grocery store). I thought I could get a new bike tire at Kmart but they were out of the right size. We did find water absorbing stuff to put in the front and aft storage areas. It's very humid some days and with us not moving regularly, the air doesn't really get a chance to circulate. The calm held through our dive at Molasses Reef - definitely the best dive so far with lots and lots of the small reef fish that are so bright with colors. It seems the reef is recovering from the heavy misuse that was evident 10 years ago in the form of broken sea fans and dead coral. Florida has done a nice job protecting the string of reefs that lie about 5 miles off of the shore. The glass bottom boat out of Pennekamp park joined us at the reef. It's a fun trip that we've done a couple of time when in the Keys in the past.
Once we left the reef (depth about 25 feet) we had to travel a mere 1/4 mile to reach water between 100 and 200 feet - the perfect depth for Steve to try his hand at trolling. Amazingly enough, it wasn't too long before he clearly had a fish on! Didn't know what but we would soon find out it was a mahi-mahi (dolphin fish)!! He's been trying to catch one of these ever since we were here years ago on a chartered Mainship trawler with Paul and Miriam. It was quite the challenge to get it in the boat but between the two of us we did it :-) Miriam did catch a shark one time (picture of Paul, Miriam and Steve is from summer of 2000) :-)
The real problem came when we went to put it in the cooler ......
The rest of the trip back was uneventful and no more fish (which is probably a good thing as our freezer is getting quite full). The size limit on these fish is 20" and this one was 31" so we figured that it must be fairly big. Sadly, we didn't think to weigh it. As usual, I filleted it and then guess what we had for dinner - again :-) The rest of the fish will go into the crab pots as bait this morning when Ty and Steve check the traps. Wonder what they'll find as the traps have sat for 3 days .....
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