Deep Sea Fishing

[PhoenixRising]

I just reserved my first deep sea fishing trip. Its an 11 hour Gulf Stream trip off of Myrtle Beach in SC. I am SO excited. I love fishing but have never been deep sea fishing.
Has anyone else gone deep sea fishing? What were your experiences like? Any Do's or Dont's or things I might want to take along for the day and might not otherwise think of?
I'm told we're allowed a cooler but no glass containers or Banana's.(Thought that was strange) I'm sure I'll be taking lots of water, and probably lunch. (They do have a snack bar on board the boat)
I'm also told the Mates will clean the fish for tips when we return to shore.

[khall]

I did and was a total mistake for me and my sensitive inner ear! Went off the coast of Oahu, HI and was seasick the entire time unless I sat very carefully in the "chair" looking at the horizon. To be fair the sea was a washing machine with not just swells but side to side waves, no way to get used to the movement. DS was pretty sick too, DH of course was not. Inner ear like iron, helps he is a private pilot with IFR ticket/training.

[hoopoe]

sun screen and lip protection ( sun and wind) hat for same. waterproof gloves.

foul-weather great/waterproof shoes boots warm hat. Have a change of clothes in car
camera
binoculars

the no banana rule may be because someone on the crew is allergic.

Soft ginger candy is helpful if you get queasy. I had no issue with a moderate sea . Light protein snacks like hard boil egg, nuts cheese rather than a more traditional lunch.

[Josette]

Dramamine is my friend.

[StraightForward]

You might ask them about shoes. You'll want something with traction on a wet deck, but they might have requirements to prevent scuffing (no black soles, etc). Bring a good wind breaker and dress in layers. Pack some waterproof pants and wear quick-drying pants too if you have them. And a small towel you don't care about, because if you handle a fish, you'll want to get the slime off.

[boots-aregard]

OOh, never been. I shall live through you when you come back and tell us all. Photos, or it didn't happen!

[Mareless]

I've never been. But maybe the banana thing is because of their strong odor. Maybe the smell of bananas makes people more prone to sea sickness?

[heddylamar]

I'd be packing dramamine, regular coke and alcohol wipes.

Camera, plus the waterproof stuff and a (full) spare change of clothes.

[Chisamba]

The sun refects I the water so you get sunburn on the underside of your arms, be careful when you put on your sun protection.

Seasickness is more prevalent than with sailing because the boat will shift in every direction, will not hurt to take something for seasickness.

Have no idea about three banana rule ,. Some game reserves they confiscate your citrus at the gate, because the elephants love it so much they destroy cars for it,. Maybe Jaws likes banana.

Hopefully they have a place for you to pee.

[PhoenixRising]

Some really great thoughts here, definitely some things I didn't think of!
I think I'm going to have a shopping list before this trip, I don't have waterproof pants or anything but I definitely need to have them on hand since they said the boat will go out even in rain. They only cancel if the water is too crazy. Does anyone have any suggestions for good, but inexpensive waterproof pants?
There are bathrooms on the boat, I was worried about that too!
I'll definitely be taking a lot of pictures, hopefully I'm not the only one who goes. I'm hoping to have 1-2 friends along but they are not sure yet if they can. Will be a lot easier to get pictures if they go too!

[Moonshine]

Bananas are bad luck at sea; at least on fishing vessels. Not sure why, but they are taboo on a lot of deep sea fishing boats.

[StraightForward]

http://www.sierratradingpost.com/white- ... ear~d~2%2F

These are the pants I took to Peru last year. Very light and packable. Not breathable, but the price is right.

[Canyon]

Some people swear by acupressure wrist bands for seasickness, like these. I have not tried them - I have an iron stomach and inner ears, so I can't vouch for their effectiveness.

[Literiding]

I hope your trip isn't the next couple days:

144438W5_NL_sm.gif (31.81 KiB) Viewed 16414 times

[PhoenixRising]

I hope your trip isn't the next couple days:

No, thankfully not until July!

[Alex]

Everything everyone else mentioned and some nicely shaped EAR PLUGS to keep the COLD wind from stunning your ears and giving you a terrific headache. Whenever I sail on the open ocean (never gone deep sea fishing), I eventually have to resort to ear plugs if the wind is really kicking up. Several layers of clothing w/a really great WINDBREAKER. You never have a clue if you're going to be toasty enough to strip down but you also never know when you'll need to BULK UP IN LAYERS! If you get caught in lots of chop and you keep getting drenched, it's nice to have layers to peel off, dry them and then pull them on again. Enjoy! Remember to release the rarer species should you catch any. What species are they saying they'll find for you?

[PhoenixRising]

E What species are they saying they'll find for you?

Copy pasted from their website
"We limit this trip to 15 max and include premium bait(normally sells for $25 per box). This is the big fishing trip when you want to put fish in the box. You can catch it all on these trips, grouper, black sea bass, vermilion snapper, grey snapper, triggers, rudders and kings on the drift lines."

I think it would be cool to catch Mahi-Mahi but they're not on that list and I'm not sure if they're in the gulf stream? I know some of their other trips list them as possibilities.

[PhoenixRising]

So, the fishing trip was Sunday and we had SO much fun. I'm super glad I took Dramamine before and along on the trip, the waters were pretty rough and 7 of 25 people were sea sick. Thankfully not me or my friend and her husband.
We had so much fun we booked a second trip and we're going again on a small private charter with the same captain in the morning.
Trip one we caught grouper, Amber Jack, b-liners, and a single mahi mahi.

There is a restaurant right at the marina that will cook the fish that you caught that day for a very reasonable price. we took advantage of that and had one of the filets from the mahi mahi cooked for dinner after we had been out fishing all day. It was absolutely fantastic.

Tomorrow we're hoping to do a little shark fishing! A couple people caught some on the long trip Sunday, but we didn't.

[Josette]

Sounds like you had a great adventure and enjoyed your catch too! Glad to hear you took the Dramamine - I learned that lesson the hard way.

[emmalou]

Glad you had fun. My Dad has been running deep sea fishing boats since before I was born. I get sea sick though.

An Amber Jack was the hardest fish I've ever caught. It went through myself, sister, mom until finally my Dad had to reel it in. Those suckers are fighters.

[PhoenixRising]

We ended up going fishing 3 times. The picture with all the fish is from the first time, the gulf stream trip. We caught a lot more fish than that but due to daily limits this is all we came back with. I caught a large grouper and a lot of the littler red fish. Later in the week we called the charter and asked to go with the same captain again, we specifically told them we didn't want to go on a boat with anyone else, but when we got there we had a different captain. We found out the captain we had gone with Sunday had quit and gone to a different charter and they didn't bother to tell us until we were getting on the boat. We were really upset but had already paid so we went anyway. That trip was horrible. The crew didn't really try at all, we wanted to go shark fishing, and there were 6 of us in the boat but they only put out 3 lines and old bait which they repeatedly told us wasn't as good as live bait. They "tried" to get us live bait but only actually threw the net 3 times. Needless to say, we didn't catch a thing that trip.
Through a turn of events, we were able to get a hold of the captain we had wanted to go with, and scheduled a trip with him the next day. We still only caught one shark, but he and his crew definitely gave it every effort they could to get us fish.
I'm already chomping at the bit to get back, and am seriously considering moving out there, I haven't been happy living in the KC area for quite awhile and have wanted to leave for years but just haven't made it happen yet. I'll be exploring that possibility more now, and seeing what I can make happen.

[Literiding]

To see where you went on your adventures, you can pull up these free charts from NOAA (you may have to save them and view them in a viewer in order to read the soundings):

http://www.charts.noaa.gov/PDFs/11520.pdf

http://www.charts.noaa.gov/PDFs/11535.pdf

Each minute of latitude is one nautical mile so there are sixty nautical miles between 33 and 34 degrees of latitude. There are ten nautical miles between the 10' and the 20' minutes of latitude on the right and left scales along the side. Don't use the Longitude at the top or bottom.

If you poke around on the NOAA site, you can find charts for the harbor you left from and most every where else on the East and West Coast of the U.S.

For the non-nautical, charts are for seeing where you are on the water, maps are for seeing where you are on the land.