The fisherman formerly known as.........

You guessed it, Prince. He didn't sing or play guitar or have the moves the "other" Prince did, but he sure knew how to fish! We had a very successful reef fishing experience with Moses at the West End, so we asked if he knew someone at Grand Cay that we might look up and he said ask for Rubin. After a very uneventful crossing from West End to Grand Cay, about 60 miles, we tied up the boat and cleaned it up and had a beer. Surprise, surprise. We got there about 2:00 and thought we might be the only ones there. There were a lot of locals hanging around the office and it was closed. About 5:00 the boats started rolling in and a couple vendors set up their wares by the office and it soon appeared we would not be the only ones and the place basically filled up. There was a lady selling fresh conch salad so we of course had to have some. I asked her if there was a fisherman named Rubin around and she pointed him out and yelled at him and he came over. He actually did not fish offshore but only on the reef and back country. He recommended Prince. And a Prince he was. He said we should go out pretty early if wanted to catch a Yellowfin Tuna, so we obliged. Believe it or not SBS, we pulled out of the marina at 7:30 and were fishing by 8:00 or so. It is like the other islands we have been to in that only a couple miles from shore we were in 1000 feet of water. Not much going on for the next hour or so therefore, the early morning departure didn't seem to matter. But about 15 miles offshore we ran onto a weed line that was loaded with miscellaneous floating debris or as they say back in Islamorada, that magical piece of debris. We were trolling all bigger rigged ballyhoo and hadn't caught anything for a few minutes and I suggested to Prince we troll a Billy Bait. You previous cruisers know that is a dolphin's delight. Within 5 minutes we had hooked our first fish (on the BB), a nice 8 or 10 pound Dolphin. But then we found a pallet near the weedline and the bite was on. We hooked a double on the big stuff, a 30 and 40 pounder. ACJM drove and Prince mated and I reeled in both. By the time I got those 2 in I was nearly ready to lay down in the fish box also. Next pass by the pallet we hooked a double again, this time Wahoo. Not real big but very nice, about 15 pounds or so. We ended up the day with 5 Dolphin, 3 Wahoo and a Barracuda which I had promised to Rubin if we caught one. What a day! We are sorry SBS missed out on this as he was looking forward to catching a Dolphin, but we wondered if that Jayhawk background was causing the bad luck with offshore fishing. Sure enough it must have been the problem. I have said this before, but I think it might have been one of our best offshore days ever. At one point we reeled up the Billy Bait to get it out of the way for the big stuff. All this and we were headed back to the marina by 1:30. We saw another boat in the area and we called him in and told him what we had found. Never had anyone done that for us, but maybe it will pay off someday. We do not have room to store much in our freezer so we kept some of the fillets, gave some to our neighbor on the dock and gave the rest to Prince....and of course some to Rubin. We also had the local restaurant cook us all we could eat. By the way the local bar was a real treasure. Chris Geroff would have loved it. Kind of weathered, all dark wood inside, a pool table on one end and a group of locals playing dominoes on the other end. ACJM and I were the only non locals in the place, but Rubin was there and I bought the bar a round and we were like locals then. Now on to Green Turtle Cay.