Ft Lauderdale Sailfish
Playmaking On Some Sailfish
One of our earliest trips after the blood oath to go on bucket list trips, this one came up all of the sudden but ended up being one that would stand the test of time. Joe calls me up on a Wednesday and casually said that him and one of our high school classmates were going to Ft Lauderdale for the weekend and wanted me to join them. Normally I would have made 1,000 excuses and held fast to my life commitments of work and crap around the house that I had to take care of. When up steps my wife to the plate and says to me “If you don’t buy the plane ticket I’m going to do it for you.”
Ok then…looks like I was going to Ft Lauderdale.
Somehow pulling it all together in time, I was able to make a flight and catch up with the fellas on Friday afternoon. Just in time to get settled in our trashy Ft Lauderdale 2-star hotel but seriously who really gives a shit when you are just utilizing it as a place to crash after a few beers and shots with a hall of famer (more to come of that in a sec).
So we are innocently sitting at some hotel tiki bar putting back a few beers when some girl comes up to our high school buddy and starts putting out the vibes to him when out of the blue in rolls Hall of Fame Wide Receiver (and all-time Dallas Cowboy great) Michael Irvin. For reference purposes Jaycen is a HUGE Cowboys fan so we call up Jaycen at about 1:30 AM his time and give him shit about how we are at the bar with The Playmaker. Obviously he doesn’t believe us so we had to snap a selfie and send it to him. Now I’ll say this…the SECOND that Michael Irvin walked into the bar, the girl that was talking it up with our high school classmate stopped the conversation and made a B-line to Michael Irvin. I swear that Joe and I about died laughing at the sequence of events.
Needless to say, we were off to a great start to the trip!! One thing you all need to know about Joe is that he was born with a golden horseshoe up his ass when it comes to fishing. The guy lives a charmed fishing existence and I’m just glad to bear witness to the greatness. I think the Michael Irvin experience was just part of Joe’s great karma.
Onto the fishing. So we had one day to do this thing. Our goal was to get a sailfish and maybe pick up a few other species along the way. The great thing about Ft Lauderdale is that when you go deep sea fishing, you are literally only a few miles offshore and I’m not kidding that you can still see people chilling on the beach while you catch some pretty significant fish.
We started the day by dropping down on some tilefish, which were very similar to catching grouper to me. Dropping down and hammering a few was a nice way to get things started. At one point I snapped a rod at the handle which was odd. After that we were onto trolling for a big fella.
We had a few bites from smaller fish but after a short period of time, we got a big hit. We had hooked up with a sailfish and everybody was pumped. The fight went on for a while and eventually we were able to land the sailfish, which was a beauty. The captain said when we got back to land that it was the largest sailfish caught in that area to that point in the year (Thx Joe). For our deckhand, this was his first sailfish so he got the treatment from the Captain in being tossed overboard. For us, we got to fly the sailfish flag and chalk up another awesome lifetime fishing memory.
