This was a trip to do some reef monitoring for MGFB. Initially Eric from Ohio was going to go with us, but work caused him to miss the trip at the last minute. My oldest son Ben (18) is graduating in a few days so he came along with Dalton McQueen and Tyler Peterson to make it sort of a graduation party outing. My youngest son Luke (14) also came along. We started at the Southern Star in FH-13 but were met with a murk layer that shielded the wreck from inspection. The masts rose to 41 feet which was high enough to get into the clear water. Still holding plenty of fish, but the larger red snapper have diminished possibly due to commercial pressure. We then ventured out deeper toward FH-7. We hit a nice school of Mahi on the way thanks to Ben sighting them near some Sargassum we were passing. We also saw 5 Sea Turtles on the venture, a nice pod of friendly dolphins, and spotted a Hammerhead Shark Fin on the surface off at a distance. We were able to hook him up for a brief period and he burned some drag off of Ben's reel. We finally got to FH-7, but the Dive on the Jumbo Barge showed it too had a murk layer masking the structure. Still plenty of nice water and fish above it. We also made a dive on Rig CA43 where Luke caught the yellowfin tuna last trip. We saw a big fat flying fish get airborne on the way which really pumped us up, but no yellowfin on this trip which encompassed 116 nautical miles, 11.5 hours, and 68.3 gallons of fuel.
