Deep Sea Adventures

So the long anticipated fishing trip was not the tuna bonanza we had hoped for. I think it was memorable and worth it for the stories we all now have to tell, but a pleasant day on the Atlantic is was not...

The trip started out at the crack of dawn - wait make that the end of Friday night. Below is a picture (a much more clear version of a clock than another blogger I know recently took) of the car clock as we left Jamie's house in Ventnor, NJ.

As we got to the boat filled with anticipation and dreams of battling huge tuna on the blue waters of the Atlantic we see the Top Shelf come in to view with her captain "Capitan Bill" and his mate Mike (an out of work NJ State Marine Biologist - way to go Corzine!)

One the 2 hour ride out to "Elephant's Neck" a spot in the Atlantic about 40 miles from Cape May, NJ 3 brave fisherman crack open the first beers at ~4:30 am.

Turns out that may have been a bad idea as Karim found himself very seasick about an hour later, still pitch black and already chumming the water. I am not one to throw stones as about 2 hours later I was giving my morning coffee and breakfast back to king Neptune. This resulted in my spending most of the rest of the trip laying in the middle of the cabin on my back with my eyes shut trying to ignore the pulsing waves of nausea - and all of that after popping a Bonine that morning!

Well after a couple of hours we did manage to land a fish, and a pretty large blue fin tuna at that, however it need to be about 5 inches longer to be regulation. Scott was more than a little disappointed after having made the effort to land the fish to watch Capitan Bill throw it back in.

On a side not - the entire group is unanimous about this, we do NOT recommend Captain Bill for trips he was an ass to his mate Mike and the only time he came down from the wheel was to throw Scott's fish back in and get some Aspirin for his headache which I am sure was the remains of his hangover. He did not make an effort at all to make a somewhat miserable situation any better.

To try and capture at least some of the feeling of being on the boat for 13 hours I took this short video of what it looks like sitting in the fighting chair:


Finally I was up next to catch fish, and after walking outside to talk with Mike he asked me to reel in one of the poles. As the line got near the boat I realized there was a fish on the line. A 21" Dolphin or Mahi-Mahi as it is sold commercially, was on the line - just long enough to keep. Anyway here is a group shot of the salty crew and next year we are going to Miami to fish.