Deana Bush & Jim Norris - June 10, 2007© Photos by Mark Miller © Hi-Res Source
Talk about a messed up trip. This one started with a booking by Mark Dunn for Saturday, June 9, but was cancelled. The weather was actually looking better for the next day on Sunday, so I decided to invite Steve and Issac Vlahos to go with me and my 3 sons on Sunday, June 10. At 9:10 P.M. I got a call from Deana Bush wanting to book a charter for 4 persons. I explained the situation and that Steve had already picked up ice and was eager to go so I could only take one or two. Disappointed, she said she would call back if they decided to take me up on it. At 3:30 A.M. I got a call that 2 of them wanted to go, so I said, "Sure, be at the dock at 5:30". On time, they showed and we were off. We made an initial stop in FH-13 and picked up 3 keeper snapper, but we wanted the big ones, so we headed out to deep water. We got about 43 miles out and had engine failure. Yes, my Honda actually let me down. I made a list of friends to call and everyone seemed to be out of town. One of them, Brandon Bosarge, was actually fishing the Ram Powell, but we could not raise him on the radio. After a bit, we sighted a vessel off to the Southwest and began shooting some flares off, starting with expired ones. The old ones did not work, but as we tried the newer ones we got results, however, they did not see us. Then we sighted another Vessel running Northwest off to the Southeast and we tried again, this time getting their attention. The Vessel was about a 36 foot Luhrs out of Biloxi, the "Silver Lining" owned by Mike Moses, who had actually also been fishing the Ram Powell, Horn Mountain, and Marlin. They had quite a nice catch of Dorado, Wahoo, and Blackfin. He was kind enough to lend us the long 43 mile tow in. We got about a 1-1/2 miles from the Dock when the fuel supply exhausted! After getting another boats attention to go get us some fuel, we eventually made it to the Dock. I had called on my neighbor, Ben Barzelay, to get my spare Truck Key, pickup my Trailer, and come get us. Since we ran out of fuel, he had a significant wait, but we finally got in. We were very dissappointed, because the weather was great and we knew we were headed for some nice fish. Maybe next time. We only ended up with 3 Snapper and 2 Sharpnose Sharks that we caught while broke down.
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