At the beginning of the week the weather was dismal. It appeared the entire week might be in jeopardy due to strong winds pushing through. Fishing in the rain was possible but not constant waves of four feet or greater, forget it!. We checked in with our charter Captain Wayne Dillon on the boat Maverick. He was willing to push us back a day to allow for the weather since we scheduled three days straight. The number of hours per day we left up to him and the weather. Our goal was 26 hours fishing for the week.

The first day was ten hours which was decided at the dock Tuesday morning. When we arrived at the first spot, "Ten cranks off the bottom", yelled Captain Wayne but before we could crank up we had a fish on. It was like that all day. The cooler was full of grouper within the first two hours when we then turned our attention to red snapper.

Trigger fish were plentiful too. This left the rest of the day to head out to the deep water, 300 feet or so, and fish for a tourney entry. Competition in the rodeo was stiff this year. By this date many large fish had already been caught and it seemed unlikely we could beat them.

Hurricane Ivan damaged 100s if not 1000s of boats along the Florida cost. Several salvage companies were underway collecting boats along the shoreline and many still adrift. The Destin harbor has one of the salvage companies in operation. One of the harbor restaurants,

The Lucky Snapper, had a parking lot full of damaged boats. The damage ranged from minor to total loss. As we were coming in from about 30 miles out on the first day our captain spotted a Hobie Cat adrift. He made the remark, "I always wanted one of those" and we soon found ourselves in the salvage business. Since it was covered with cables and rope it made towing a problem but not for long. We came along side while one of us jump on the vessel and cut the cables, hoisted the mast and boom to the rest of us on the Maverick and wrapped a rope around the center for towing. We made it fine for 5 miles but she started coming apart. This was when we had a great idea. Heave it right on the back of the boat, but how? The captain eased up on her from the stern. Two of us grabbed and lifted the pontoons and the captain threw the engines in reverse. With a good pull she slid right in the back of the boat.

When we arrived at the dock boy did we get a ration from every captain and first mate that saw us but their teasing soon subsided when they glanced at the fish we caught. Our first mate, John Boy, worked overtime cleaning fish that evening. We preserved our fish by freezing it before returning to Kentucky. To save space in the freezer we brought along a vacuum packer. While others in our group cooked dinner, fresh grouper, the others vacuum packed fish. The packing operation was only interrupted to eat, then we were back at it finishing late in the evening.

The second day was almost cancelled due to high wind. Captain Wayne figured we could squeeze six or eight hours in so we headed out. At around 20 miles we discovered the wave height was pushing five to six feet so we headed back closer to shore. He had a few spots closer in shore towards Fort Walton he wanted to try before calling the day a total loss. To our surprise the grouper were waiting for us and our total catch for the day was very respectable. We needed time to rest anyway since we were up so late packing fish the night before.

On the morning of the last day the weather was perfect, wind WNW 5 to 10 miles an hour but more like a constant 5 miles an hour. We were one of the first boats out of the harbor for a ten hour trip. The sun greeted us with a spectacular sunrise. The wind was at our backs and before we knew it we were soon at our first fishing spot.

The action was just like the first day. No sooner did we hit bottom we had a fish on. Grouper were averaging ten to fifteen pounds and we reached our limit very early on both grouper and red snapper. We caught more triggerfish than I had ever seen caught on any one trip. Reluctantly, we threw back more fish than we kept because of size and limit regulations. When the boat’s cooler could not hold one more fish we headed in. The general feeling in our group of those three days was disbelieve, we never experienced any fishing that could compare when considering size and amounts of fish caught. The charter boat Maverick made it an especially memorable trip. Our success was directly the result of Captain Wayne Dillon and first mate John Boy. All hands were raised when the question of coming again next year was asked. We told Captain Wayne the experience was certainly a high water mark where all future fishing trips would be judged.