Prior to our trip, we clearly articulated our desire to spend more time on our 8-hour trolling for larger fish than bottom fishing. In fact, we even agreed to change boats in order to make that happen. Just before boarding, we were informed that a personnel change had been made regarding our first mates. We were also informed by Captain Jamey and First Mate Darryl that the seas would be rough and that fishing would be challenging. Our party agreed to press on.
Upon reaching open water, it was obvious that the choppy water was going to make standing difficult. However, Darryl was encouraging and we were hopeful the Gulf water would calm. Darryl put out two trolling lines while we traveled to our first spot. Once we arrived, those two lines were retrieved and were never deployed again. We bottom fished for about 20 minutes and after being tossed around a bit with no bites, we moved to our second spot. There, bites were sporadic and dolphins kept stealing our bait fish. At our third spot, we landed a nice-sized mackerel and a Trigger fish.  At the fourth, fifth and sixth spots, we hooked what we believed to be sharks. While exciting at times, this ate up several hours of valuable fishing time, caused Darryl’s attention to be focused only on one rod and all ended with broken fishing lines. As fishing time came to an end, the last shark we hooked broke its line and Darryl asked us to bring up the other lines. After doing so, we headed back to the marina. The trolling lines were not put back out.  After leaving the boat, Darryl offered to clean and bag our fish, which was appreciated. The only real source of disappointment for us was the captain’s lack of communication with his charter guests. On previous trips, and on similar boats, the captain has always asked for “last requests” or checked with us to see if we were “happy.” Captain Jamey did neither. Overall, we were “satisfied” with our trip on the Short Fuse, even with the rough seas and inordinate amount of time spent on bottom fishing and battling dolphins and sharks. Just a little TLC from the captain would have made it much more enjoyable.