Finally managed to reschedule our floaters trip. We watched the seas & weather, and decided to take advantage of supposed 0.7' seas for the long distance run to the floaters 80-100 miles south of Orange Beach, AL. Not sure where the 0.7' seas were, but they weren't where we were. Although, bumpy, we still made good time and enjoyed fair weather.

On the way out we stumbled across a few isolated weed patches & part of a palm tree. We did a drive by and noticed a few fish suspended underneath. A Gotcha plug produced a peanut dolphin on the 1st cast. Soon we were surrounded by what looked to be 50 or more shoolies. Pulled out the fly rod, and immediately hooked up. We each caught a dolphin on fly. We caught as many as we wanted, keeping on a half dozen larger ones. We had a couple good size bulls cruise by occasionally, but they ignored us completely. Not wanting to waste too much precious tuna time, we decided to reel in & kep moving.

We stopped at the 50 mile rigs hoping to produce an AJ for Lanny, but got completely no cooperation. We did have several decent cobia come check us out, but again, like the bull dolphin, they only wanted to see $EA $ICKNE$$ & didn't actually appear hungry. Once again, didn't want to squander too much time, so we decided to move on. We trolled wahoo lures w/our new trolling weights, but no luck.

We got to arrived at the Marlin rig, but all appeared quiet. Another boat was working a kite, so we took that as a sign they were getting desperate, must have given up on trolling. We tried to deploy Sam's new kite, but it collapsed shortly later. We chunked for a while, but only managed to feed rainbow runners.

Approaching the last hour of light, we decided to troll over to Ram Powell, to see if the tuna were active there. We had a few smaller yellow fin on a tuna dart and soon Lanny hooked up with one just barely undersize. We kept trolling and managed a double on skip jack tuna, both just under 20 lbs. About a mile from the rig, we hooked up with a screamer. While trying to put a fighting belt on Lanny, we had a second drag start singing. We had our 1st ever double on wahoo, both at 18 lbs.

We didn't see anything exciting go on around the rig, so we took a few minutes for supper & a short nap to give darkness time to settle in. Without further action, closed in and dropped a couple diamond jigs. We managed a few football sized blackfin tuna, but no monsters. Kept jigging 'til we'd had enough and headed over to the Petronious to tie up for the night & catch some shut eye.

About 5:30, we headed over to the rig to target yellow fin. Not seeing any immediate action, we trolled in large circles until we noticed fish skying on the SW side. We got quite a show of very large fish practicing their 3 meter high jumps, but they just didn't seem hungry for what we had to offer. There was another boat suffering the same fate. The tuna dart did produce a few 2 lb fish, but again, no keepers, no monsters. Lanny enjoyed some firsts - a helicopter visiting the rig for some kind of delivery, and the ballet of triple digit sized tuna doing their Olympic sychronized skying routine. With fuel at a very troubling low level, we decided to make one last ditch effort and do a major chunk & chum. Still no fish. We reeled up, felt blessed to enjoy a lot of fish, just no real heart pounders. We had a few firsts - 1st fish on fly, first wahoo double, 1st wahoo & skip jack for Lanny.