Incredible Day Today

Today was one of the Days you always remember

We were offshore looking for Dolphin and we were doing well. We were fishing some scattered Sargassum weed in about 900 ft of water and we picked at some schoolie-sized dolphin. I looked down and there was a whale shark right next to the boat. I have seen them before and I know from experience that if you don’t want to spook one, you turn off everything you can. The depth sounder is basically a sonar and I have heard the “ping” it makes and that will spook a whale Shark. I turned it off.  Saltwater washdown pumps make noise under the boat, I turned it off. I shut down one engine and slowed the other to idle speed and pulled the trolling valve. This lets the propeller turn slower than the engine. The Boat moves very slow. I just wanted the Whale Shark to stick around long enough for my customers to get a good look. Boy did that work!!.

I can’t honestly say it was because of everything I did or maybe he was just lonely, but the Whale Shark started following the boat just a foot or two off the stern. Now whale sharks eat plankton, so any blood trail coming out of our fish box probably didn’t get his attention. Whatever the reason, he stayed with us for at least 10 minutes. He was so close, My 1st mate, Edward reached out and touched him twice. It was an amazing display of one of nature’s coolest and most impressive creatures. it was a day neither myself, nor my mate or customers will ever forget

 

 

 

The Whale Shark encounter was so amazing that it overshadowed the fact that we had a really nice catch of Dolphin. Just an all around great day