Several things need to be explained so that you can follow this little “adventure”. Let me start with Mangrove Mike’s. This is a restaurant in Islamorada where Michelle and I (and most swimmers from The Race Club) use to have a good breakfast after the morning session. And as the name tells it, Mike is the owner of this restaurant.
So one morning like almost every morning after our morning session, we are having our breakfast at Mangrove Mike’s sitting at a table near the wall. And on this wall like on most walls in Mangrove Mike’s restaurant, you can see pictures of Mike and his friends and their catches from the fishing trips.
Michelle was looking at theses pictures and told me that her goal is to be on this wall with a big catch in her hands. With that new goal in her head she asked Mike if it might be possible for us to join him on one of his fishing trips once. As he loved the idea seeing us two fishing, we fixed an appointment for the next day at midday.
Just want to let you know before I start telling you the story about our fishing trip that neither Michelle nor I had ever been fishing before (so we are real beginners!).
With great expectations and pretty excited we went the next day after the morning session to the docks of World Wide Sportsman to join Mike with his boat.
First thing we had to do was to catch the baits. To get those we drove out in the ocean to stop at a little island. And it seemed that we had chosen a good day. Already after a few minutes we caught enough baits. So we drove to our first spot of the day. It was really a good place for fishing. We had a lot of fishes on our lines but either they have been to small to take them out or we couldn’t take them in. And one of Michelle’s catch was eaten by a bull shark. So after 2 hours fishing without any success, Mike decided to change our place. But also on this spot we had the same success as before. Nothing to catch for us today.
We got back in the early evening, sunburned and you will not find us on the wall in Mangrove Mike’s yet. We definitely need another try to achieve that goal.
Nevertheless, we had a great afternoon and a lot of fun!
Hey fishes! It’s not over. We’ll be back!
This is a piece I wrote for the Race Club where you’ll find the original diary post “Fishing with Mangrove Mike” as well as many others.