With a crew of Tom & Daniel, Trey, Ben, Kyle & Kyle Jr., greeted by calm sea's, we had high hopes of finishing strong in the ASWSC (Atlanta Saltwater Sportsman's Club) Destin Tournament.  We had nice, but extremely small rooms, at Pirates Cove Marina, and were a bit spoiled staying so close to the boat.

We prefished with mixed results, maybe it was our bait:

but we didn't have much success at our first spots lookingfor grouper & AJ's, other than this small one:

so headed over to look for some pointy fish at the Nipple. Not finding much action, we headed back in early to meet Kyle, Kyle (Jr.), & Daniel, hoping to get an early start out to overnight at the Spur.  We had started the day with the discovery of a banana that had been planted on our boat by some devious competitor, we hoped our luck would soon change and that we wouldn't be plagued with uncooperative fish for the duration of the tournament.

While the sea's were cooperating, we got a late start.  We all caught some shut eye, while Ben & Trey navigated us to the Spur some 64 miles from the pass.

Arriving after midnight, we slowly deployed our Swordlight and baits staggered at 400, 300, and 150' deep.  We dozed while Daniel & Kyle Jr. amused themselves dipping out various bait fish and flying fish swimming through the glow of the Swordlight.  Whiel we had the cooperation of swarms of bait, nary a bite all night from the swordfish.  The moon was almost full making a beatiful, yet bright night on the h20.  A great night for the K&K team to overnight for the 1st time.  However, the swordfish lived up to their reputation for being a bit shy of bright moonlight and seemed to stay deep. 

At daybreak, which is always grand at sea:

...we slowly converted over to our trolling setup taking advantage of already being at the beautiful water of the Spur so early.  Within a reasonably short time, we had our first dolphin of the trip.  A back to back couple, maybe literatally as Kyle & Daniel land a cow & bull dolphin only a few ounces different from one another.  Both fish were 8 lbs. and change.

Here's Kyle Jr. fighting his 1st dolphin ever:

And some still shots of the boys:

Shortly, we find a nice rip with some fair weed patches scattered along.  We trolled up & down seeing a tremendous amount of bait, dolphin, and even some triple tail hanging around.  We stopped and chummed up dolphin in short order.  While the boys were landing chicken dolphin left & right, Kyle hooked up a few fish on our 10 wt. flyrod. 

While we never actually boated one of his fish, we did have a technical release at boatside. Here's a few action shots Ben took:

While playing with the dolphin, one of our engines stalls, but has no one's attention for the moment.  After the chaos subsides and we do a quick wash down after realizing the boat looked like it had survived a bloodbath, we prepare to start to troll and soon find out our engine won't restart. 

With concerns for fuel and available daylight, we make the decision to head north, steaming at a break neck 8 knot pace!  Wow, at this rate, we'd be back at the pass in only 7.5-8 hours (OMG!!!!)  Well here's how Daniel coped with the news (btw, note the pillow with the strange "A" on it, perhaps this was our gremlin and not the banana), thanks alot Aunt Nancy !!! :) ):

We all chased shade, napped intermittently, counted our remaining water (can you think ration?!?!), and kept in radio contact with as many friendly vessels as we could find (you never know if the 2nd engine would also fail under the load of pushing the boat singlehandedly).

We did find some friends to amuse us maybe 2 hours from shore: 

 We soon cleared the pass and then headed up the ICW to the marina.  We had quite a few stares, which I assumed was due to our speed, or the lack thereof.  When we finally got to the dock, I realized it was the tremendous listing of the boat that had folks attention.  With our starboard engine down, then tank on that side remained full, while the port side had emptied only to a mere few gallons remaining.  In addition, a full fish box of block ice and dolphin added to the 100 gals of fuel, caused the boat to appear to tip over! 

We unloaded, unpuckered, and headed in for some rest, relaxation catching the end of a few college football games (go Dawgs, and for once, go Appalachian State!)  We awoke to the duties of boat & fish cleaning, and then loading her on the trailer for the haul back.  After spending a night on shore power and refreshing the batteries, the kaput engine decides to start again after all.  We had been suspicious it was only a voltage issue, and now we had our answer.  Well at least the repair will be inexpensive as compared to an engine overhaul!  BTW, Daniel's bull dolphin ended up winning the Junior Angler division, so we could take pride in at least winning one category.  'Til next time, tight lines. Oh and if we ever find out who was the banana bandit, well lets just say revenge will be sweet,and maybe slippery.