The Magic Of The Frigate - Offshore Trolling & Bottom Fishing

How is it going boys and girls? Welcome back to Key West Waterman. My name is Aaron Young. Got some pretty good wind blowing today but the weather has not been doing us any favors lately. This is the calmest day we've had in the past week, week and a half and it looks like it's going to blow 20-25 knots for another week. I wouldn't even call it a weather window. We've got like a little weather peephole. It's probably blowing 18-19 right now and we need some fish and I've been dying to get out and do some fishing. So I'm out this morning. Rode out before sunrise. Had a beautiful sunrise this morning, got a little bumpy on the way out, but I've definitely been in worse. I figured this morning we'll do some trolling, kind of go with the flow, see what we come up with. I do have three lines out right now. Up top, I have a tuna daisy chain, maybe 250 feet back, maybe a little further. That one's up top, skipping on the surface. These two right here, these rods that are bent over, I have lip lures or divers, depending on who you ask, they call them different things. They are going to dive down deep in the water and work real fast. These are more wahoo king mackerel style lures. Tunas will eat these as well. The daisy chain is more of a tuna, bonita, skipjack type of lure. But we're going to troll around and kind of go with the flow, see what happens. I figured we may like to come along. Not discriminating today, just need something to eat, preferably something delicious. I may end up throwing a fourth out, a little squid bullet, but I don't know. We'll see. I am by myself, so three can be a little bit much. Four is probably gonna be a little chaotic. That's a pretty good mark right there. I'm out in the deep water. I'm in over 300 feet of water. That's a pretty good mark. I'm moving kind of quick. That could be a really tight ball of tuna or it could just be a ball of bait, but I don't hate it. Better than marking nothing. So pretty much I'm working the deep water inside. The water was kind of greenish. Out here it got a lot bluer and there is some ledges and smaller wrecks out here. So let's cover some ground. So I got to an area that looked good. Water looked real blue. A lot of flying fish. Of course there are weeds all over the place so I might pull the wahoo lures up just for a second maybe just troll the squid daisy chain. It's a little bit better at being weedless. The wahoo lures dive down into the water so that line will just grab any piece of weed it runs through and it runs right down the line and onto the lure. Yeah the daisy chain is perfectly clean, nothing on it. I think we're gonna troll just this guy for just a second until we get out of the weeds A little bumpy today. About a mile out up ahead of the boat. I've got two frigates diving real hard, working. I've been seeing a lot of flying fish, so they may be on something. Too far away for the camera to pick it up. But I'm going to run over there and reset the lines and see if something's going on. I like frigates working, especially in the wintertime like this. So the frigates are up a bit higher now. Just means whatever they were working on went down, but could still be in the area. I'll put these lines back out. Come on, just went through another big ball of weeds. Come on, weeds, cut me some slack. We've got flyers that are being pushed up. Some type of fish, I don't know what yet, are pushing the flyers up in the air. The frigate's trying to eat them. See the frigate's back here behind me. The magic of the frigate. I can't tell what that is. Man, it is out there. I think it just pulled off, whatever it was. I had the drag pretty light on strike, but man, it definitely was a fish. Yeah, it got off. I just got lured now. Dang it. With it being up top skipping like that it almost acted acting like maybe a mahi ate it. I think it was just up on the surface doing head shakes and it just popped loose. We'll get these reset do another pass through there. Take a look at the lure. I don't see like any heavy teeth marks so either a mahi or maybe a little tuna. Get them back out. That frigate is back down. Well one of the frigates is back down over here working around. See if we can get another shot here. Got flyers working. So I've got one real short, one plug real short, right under the prop wash, maybe 50 feet behind the boat. Another one, maybe a buck 50 back. And then the daisy chain's probably 150 back. Frigate is right in my spread. Oh, something smacked this one. Eat it. There we go. Fish on. Looks like a mahi. Ate the daisy chain. The magic of the frigate. Isn't that crazy? So I'm going to keep the boat in gear just to keep tension on it. Definitely a Mahi. I'm going to turn the boat with So the wind's pushing me as well. Straighten her out. I don't want to put too much slack in the line. Straighten it out just a little bit. I like to stay at like a 45 from the boat with the boat moving. Try and stay away from these other lines in the water. All right. So I've got good movement now. Can back off just a little bit. I'm in gear still. I'm over. I'm under. Okay. So I've got this port side line coming over me. So I'm under it. Just try to keep an eye on where you're at. You don't want your lines crossing. Typically, if I had other people on the boat, I'd have them clearing the lines for me. But we're doing this solo today. A little Mahi coming up. Nice Maui. We're just going to go with the flinging it in method. Yoo-hoo! Mahi like to go nuts. Not a bad one. A little chunker there. I will take it. That's a great little eater. Healthy one. Look at the beautiful colors. The squid daisy chain for the win. There's that squid daisy chain. I tied these myself. I've got a few videos that show me making them. Very straightforward. Just squid skirts and monofilament and a couple of crimps. This one's got a bit bigger of a hook on it. I actually made this one for the Bahamas for the yellowfin tuna. But as you can see, it's not limited to tuna. Mahi will eat it too. It's a thick one, very healthy. Pretty wide compared to what we normally see. Love it. Skunk is out of the boat. Just to keep YouTube land real, it's 9.30 a.m. Been trolling for two hours. I got out here about 7.20, 7.30. Had lines in the water. I got two knockdowns, one fish in the boat. We're still working. So a little update. It is 10:30. Been trolling for about another hour. I think I'm going to switch it up and do some bottom fishing. The main reason being the water got a little off-colored. It's still blue enough for the right species, but I'm having a lot of weeds. I don't know if you can see them right there. They're scattered kind of all around. So many weeds that I'm having to constantly clear the lines, which is a giant pain in the bottom. All right, we're dropping to the bottom. Just going to use a dum-dum rig. Lead on the bottom, hook in the middle. Got a Saragosa 6000 on a 15-pound Esky rod. We're in about 200 feet of water. Just got a chunk of Bonita on there. We're going to try this, kind of go from there, see what happens. If and hopefully when I hook something, I'll show you what the bottom looks like. But I'm just going to cover some ground. So I'm obviously not anchored, just drifting a little bit. But I am using the motors to keep me over the spot. You'll see me going in and out of frame. I'm just keeping one motor in reverse. Just kind of helps me stay over the spot. I don't have a trolling motor on this boat. The fact that I'm not even getting small bites makes me think that... There's not much there, no bait or anything, so I'm going to move along. Something messing with it. Maybe little stuff. Might just be little stuff picking at it. Typically, you're getting pick, pick, pick, pick, pick, and you can never set the hook. It's going to be smaller. That's something smaller, but it is on there. Get a little blue runner or something. I don't want to find out. I don't know. It's not acting like a blue runner. JK, it's a blue runner. That is a blue runner, great kingfish or wahoo bait. Believe it or not, they're actually really good sashimi too. If we get in a pinch. I might have to keep one. Drifted off of it just a little bit. I missed the bite on that one. It just, it could be the right one, I'm not sure. Or a shark. It just came up and slammed it. No nibbles, just, it might have me down in the, actually I don't know what this is, or something ate it. Dang it. I was just sitting there bobbing it and it went straight down. And now I can't stop it. This just got extra, extra heavy. I think something ate it. I think I had something small and something ate it. Or not something small, something better. And then something bigger got a hold of it. Yep, dang it man. Yeah, that was something decent and then a predator ate whatever it was son of a bee sting So I just ran over I was between spots. I just ran over this on accident So we are gonna check that right there. That looks pretty lively You can't tell what that is hit the bottom Open the bail to make sure I was on the bottom and then went to reel into it and it was on I'm not sure I can't tell it doesn't feel huge, but it also ain't tiny. Maybe a big blue runner What do we got, what do we got? Red grouper, 200 feet of water. Not what I was expecting. So this guy is just barely legal, but I'm gonna let him back. This spot's pretty remote, so I'd love to leave it healthy. Don't see a lot of red grouper out this deep. So I'm gonna send him down on the descender. That device I just hooked it to is a descending device. Takes it back down to depth and releases that fish safely. He is off. You can feel the weight speed up. That being a new spot and all, I think we're gonna drop again, see what's down there. If you got a red grouper, you definitely got other fish. Red grouper like structure and busyness. Oh, missed it. Missed him. Doesn't that feel terrible? Oh, that's a weird, weird take. Almost sharky again. Heavy. Oh, I had something and something ate it. Something ate it again. I could feel it let it go. Dang it, dude. That's a shark. See, the shark just let it go right there. What's happening is the... It's either a shark or a goliath is spitting it out. I'm getting it 10 15 feet and it's eating it again. Come on dude. How is there a predator in the middle of nowhere? I'm on just a tiny little scratch of bottom. Doesn't matter where you go. That's insane. That's two good fish eaten by something. Different spots. What did we give? I just took the whole thing. Definitely a shark. All frayed up. So annoying. All right we're gonna try one more here. Hopefully whatever that predator was is distracted. Depends on the spot. Sometimes it's a one-time thing getting sharked or eaten by a predator. Sometimes it's every time, and if you're just sitting there repeatedly hooking fish and getting eaten, it's probably a good idea to move. The wind is picking up. Now I need both motors to stay put. This one feels a little better. Not a monster, but I don't know. Kind of just gave up. Maybe just a little bit bigger jack. Figured there'd be a mutton or something here. Red snapper. That was the last thing I was expecting to see here. A cobia. What are you doing, dude? That's why it got easier as he started to swim towards the surface. He had a friend with him. I don't want to get them separated. Well, now I got to keep dropping. I don't know what's going to come up from here. Red grouper in 200. Cobia in 200. Goodness. You never know. So this is the bottom I'm working. There's really not much to it. Just holding a little bit of life. Sometimes you don't need a whole lot to hold fish. Gonna do another there. I'm too curious now. On the bottom. My arms are getting tired. That's two drifts with no love. The bite might be over here. On the bottom. This is a new spot, a little wreck. Haven't fished it in quite some time. And I know I say that a lot, but the truth is, it's got a couple thousand numbers in my GPS. It takes a while to get to them all, so there's a lot of them that I don't hit very often. Came off. That felt like a good fish. Gonna bring it up and check it. That was a pretty aggressive bite. A good chance it got my bait. Looked like a decent fish. I can't tell by the way it's fighting what it is. Kind of a lazy bite. Actually, I don't know. Feeling kind of janky now. It's still fighting, so. Makes you think it's probably a jack of some sort. Some head shakes going on. I had a feeling. Just big enough to wear me out. I know, buddy. I know. A little jack there. I'm going to let him go. My arms are getting tired. I'm about over it. Getting my butt whooped here. Hold on. Taking him over the bow. It's getting a little rough. Definitely getting worse, as you can see. I think I'm going to hit one more spot. One more spot, and then we're going to call it. We've got one mahi. Reeled in a few fish. Definitely had worse fishing days, but... You know sometimes you come out here and you make this plan in your head and you've got this grand idea of how everything's gonna go and sometimes it doesn't go that way. That's today. Today I'm just not that great at fishing. I'm gonna hit one more spot. I just gotta run into straight into the seas about four or five miles to go check it. So it's gonna get a little bumpy but I'll see you on the other side. All right this is our last spot ladies and gentlemen. Switched it over to one of the squid jigs the bigger two ounce. Get down there a little quicker see what happens. I'm on the bottom. Good bite right away. Came out of his mouth. Because it's a jig, you can move it. You can do whatever you want. You can lay it on the bottom. You can move it. You never know. I think that one got my bait. That felt like it grabbed the tail. I had a feeling. There we go. Got a hook in that one. Well, it kind of gave up. Makes me think it's either snappery or groupery. Oh no, a shark. You're kidding. I can see the shark right here. This has got to be a joke. Third good fish Trying to scare it with the boat. Oh, he let it go. Oh, he got it again. What they'll do is they're trying to get it down and hang on to it. They'll let go and try and readjust their bite. So that one felt more like a snapper or a grouper because it gave up halfway up. Their swim bladder will fill up. You're going to have to pop it. That is frustrating. Probably should have done it a while ago, but I'm going to call it. Between the wind, the waves, and the sharks, today got the best of me. Could be worse, though. Could have been on land. It won't be my last bad day of fishing. I know that. If anyone tells you they've never had a bad day of fishing, they either are lying or they ain't been fishing very long. But I'm all done out here. I'm done complaining. I'll see you back at the dock. It's going to get bumpy. Better hang on. Guess who figured out I was flaying a fish and showed up? We've got a tune dog and a pearl girl. Everyone knows when it's fish filleting time. All right, I'm filleting. Oh. You're fine. You can be in it. I'm just letting you know. Toon wants to see. Of course he does. Did he jump over the fence? Yeah. He heard the hose and jumped over, like, immediately. He must. Oh, dude. It's so funny, because that just means that he's just hanging out right there. He just hears the hose or the fillet knife unsheathed. This knife is, like, uncomfortably sharp. Oh. Dad's not done yet. You have to wait. Look how patient. Can you see the video? Look out. Patient and cute. The one ear kills me. You're like a hound dog. That's actually not a bad Mahi. Yeah, I was going to say, this is good. It's a fatty little one. Like, it was a little shorter, but thick. Yeah. Did you eat this one? Just this one. Lost another one. I just did a bottom fishing. I released one legal red grouper, and then jacks and stuff, and then all the fish that felt good, sharks ate. But you never know. It is funny how, like, I can catch blue runners and anything else, and it's like some of the sharks are actually picky. They'll only eat certain species. Oh that is interesting. Yeah like a lot of times like if we're if we're tuna fishing and you hook it, you hook a tuna. You got one ear already covered. Okay sorry when you're tuna fishing. Um you hook a bonita sometimes they'll just only eat the tuna so like they'll just let the bonitas go by or like if you're if you're bottom fishing and you hook like a mutton or a red snapper or a grouper they'll eat it but if you hook like a jack or a blue runner Or something like that. They'll let it go by. That's fascinating. Not always. Like, I've had him eat jacks. It's just, it's not nearly as common. Yeah. That's so interesting. Yes. You guys already eat your snacks? Oh, yeah. Who's ready for the next one? You're buying? I think he is losing a little bit of eyesight. It's from all the mice he eats. What is that supposed to mean? It was just a joke. Oh. Did that cause... Is that like the three blind mice? Is that where they get it from? Yeah. If you eat three of them. Well, he's definitely eating three of them. Tilda, are you going blind because you ate too many mice? It's really funny you said that because my mind was going to a three blind mice joke. No, sorry. Killed your punchline. I don't know. You didn't kill the punchline. It was just funny. Yeah, everybody's happy. Happy. Everybody's happy. Tina, are you happy? In like 5,000 years, we're gonna excavate this canal and be like, there was a fishing village here. We found the remnants of 45,000 fish. Yeah. Actually, they're going to say a lot of things. And a couple of chicken bones. The balcony, too. As I said, a couple of chicken bones. Yeah, chicken, pork. Yeah, there's going to be a lot. Tina, I'm getting bit up. Yeah. Yeah, they're bad. You know, when people ask me on my channel, I have a real estate channel, and people are always like, how are the bugs? And only at sunset and sunrise. It depends on the day, though. It's just because we've had rain. Like some nights I can sit out here and I don't have a single issue with anything. True. But it is inevitable. It does happen. I mean, we're in the woods. What did you expect? Of course there's bugs. Right next to mangroves. Of course there's bugs. Not really mosquitoes. That's not a bad fillet. Look at that. Sorry, I'm taking over your channel. That's okay. I'm talking about bugs. I feel like we don't have bad mosquitoes, though. It's just no seams. No, it's just no seams. But only in the summertime when it's warm. Yeah. Looking good. That was a healthy mahi. I'm grateful for it. We are in the kitchen. Tonight we're going to do... Most of this is going to be pretty basic. We do have a special addition to tonight's dinner that I'll talk about here in a second. It's me. It's Madeline. I'm kidding. Yeah. I'm getting bored. . I feel like we've been slacking on the recipes lately. . . . We got back from our long trip. If you . . didn't see it by chance, we posted most of it on Instagram, . . . but had a long trip. We're kind of . settling back in. We've just been catching up on work, . . so I feel like maybe the recipes have . been slacking a little bit, but we're going to get back to it. . . . Tonight's is going to be very interesting . . because we get to try something new that we've never had . . before. This was actually a gift from one of Madeline's clients. . . . . . It is called Pikliz. I think . . I'm pronouncing that right. Hopefully it is a Haitian spicy slaw. . There's different spellings online, but the one, one of the ones I saw, I think she spelled it differently, but the most common I saw, just in case you want to look it up, look up the recipe. I don't have this. This This was a gift. I don't have the recipe. It is P-I-K-L-I-Z. I remember what the recipe was. Do you remember the recipe? Well, I remember the ingredients. Does she want you to share it? Oh, I don't know. It was like a secret family ingredient. That might be a secret family recipe. No, okay. It's basically, hold on, you said it's a Haitian slaw, right? Yeah, it's a spicy slaw from whatever thing I saw. Pretty much what I remember, because I went over to her house to go over some work stuff, and she was in the kitchen making it, and so she told me all about it, and it requires onions, garlic, lime, it's got this other juice that she put in there. Thank And then she had a ton of habanero peppers, so. I was going to say, I smelled it, and it smells like habanero. Yeah, she told us whenever she's making it, because I was like, ooh, I like spicy. you And she's like, this is very, very hot. Like, very, very hot. And she made sure I understood that. So we might only use a little bit, but she made us a whole jar, so so we can hold on to it for a while. much. It'll be good over fish, chicken, pork. We're going to give it a try. We're just going to blacken our mahi, cast iron. I'll get it. We're gonna blacken our mahi over some cast iron, or over the cast iron, a little bit of rice, squeeze a lemon, we're gonna add some of this slaw, and we will report back. If you're wondering why I'm wearing a sweatshirt, it's like full-blown winter outside. It's amazing. It's like 75 degrees, it's blowing like 25 knots, it's still windy. We have a moon tonight. Look at the moon coming in, it's getting chilly out here. Loving it, I am loving it. Just a squeeze of lemon. Um, yes, I want to squeeze my own lemon, here we go, this is not the jar that it came in obviously, it was homemade, reused the jar, which I love, yeah, she, and this is just a small jar that she gave us, the big one that she's saving, portioning yours out, yeah, sorry, um, the big one for her family is like this wide, and this tall, she had a lot, but a little squeeze of lemon, I'm kind of scared. Why? She kept telling me it's very, very hot. Oh, man. There we go. Fresh mahi swimming around. Fresh slaw. Pickles. Fresh pickles. Pickles. Hopefully I'm saying that right. If I'm mispronouncing that, I apologize. I looked it up online. Everyone, not everyone, several people said it and spelt it differently. So, just like anything. Thank you, guys. Thank you so much. I'm excited. Love trying new stuff from different areas. Yeah, absolutely. Okay. Are you going like one full bite of everything? Is everything? Should I try just the slaw first? I don't think you can just try the slaw first. I don't want to do everything. I'm kind of scared. Are you scared? Okay. All right. I'm going to try the slaw. Here we go. Okay. It's hot. It is hot, but it's really good. It's very citrusy, spicy. Bright like. Fresh. Fresh. Yeah. Okay. Put this on like tacos. It's a little warm. The heat's kind of moving in a little bit. I don't know. My palate's got it. Get one of... No, no, no. I see the habanero. No, no. I'm staying clear. Wow. That is good. Right? With the blackened, I'm sure it's really good. Hold on. I'm trying to think. I mean, you said it just right. It's bright, citrusy, spicy. Mmm. Wow. Wow. I can't wait to tell her that we like it. I love it. She's so sweet. I think it's great. It's really good. It's familiar but I'm trying to I know it just kind of reminds me of like it's an island slaw. Yeah I would say like like when we have um we've had fish tacos before with like a spicy slaw on top. It's like that but I think just this has a more flavor and more kick. I'm gonna level with you. It's really good. It is spicy. It's spicy. That's all I got to say. Okay, but also for people that want to recreate it, if they see the recipe online, you don't want it this spicy. You could always reduce the amount of habanero or use a different type of, well, I don't want to mess up their, like, green, but they use, I think it was like bonnet Peppers or habanero. Scotch bonnet peppers or... I didn't know if that was different. I was asking. That was a question. I think that I saw an S next to bonnet, so I think it would be that one. Anyway, some sort of bonnet pepper and habanero, but you could possibly use maybe less habanero or whatever. You could kind of mix up the ratio. I don't know. I feel like it's doable. It's not unbearable spice. We eat a lot of spicy stuff. I thought it was going to be like rock my socks off spicy. Now, if I ate half of that, I probably would be in trouble. I probably could go to the hospital. I think in moderation, like I got a little bit of warmth on my face, but we love spicy, so. Oh yeah. I think it's great. Wow. It's really good though. I'm on board. But yeah, about the fish. Yeah, right. The fish is good too. That's great. Like get all three. Yeah. Signs that are coming. I don't know. Get a little sniff like. Yeah, this would be really good on a taco. Do you want a taco? Do you want bread? Okay. We're making it sound like it's really, really hot. Do you want a taco? Do you want bread? It's pretty hot. I don't know. I think we got it. Quit working around the orange pieces, Hotshot. Eat some of the orange ones. I think we got it, babe. I'm thrilled. And the mahi is cooked perfectly. Very moist. It goes really nice with the blackening and the rice. Wow. What an island-y dish. I love it. I love this. I literally feel like I'm on vacation. It's such a tropical, bright flavor. That is all we got on this one. It's soup and chowder season coming up. We've got sashimi season. I know I keep saying it. The wind and weather has just not been cooperating. We're hopefully going to get out soon for some wahoo and some tuna. Ooh, I just got a really spicy piece. That's all we got. Thank you so much for the slaw. We really appreciate it. Yes, thank you, guys. Thank you. We'll keep the videos coming. We'll see you on the next one. Later. No, it's good. Dude, it's good. You got me thinking, like, really good. Got me thinking about like, Why does no one make a really rip and spicy ceviche or like a super spicy conch salad or something?