The "Hallerback" Crew of Port Orange Florida
We all meet at 5 am, sucks to get up that early but we have such a good time when we are out that it is so worth it... Margaret & I like to sleep until Gabe her husband gets out to sea, normally a 3 hour boat ride or more depends how far out we go for the day... Our first mate is Shayne, he loves to fish and rigs all our baits and gaff's the fish out for us and gets the fish into the boat. He is so cool, he lets Margaret and I bring in the fish and helps us with them rather than get them himself....
Gabe loves fishing and believes girls should out number guys on the boat! Margaret is the coolest fishing wife, plus the best looking...A new concept I'm sure for fisherman... but a good one, the “Hallerback” is famous now for its "Dancing Fishermen"... We do the Lady Angler a lot and various other tournaments.On one trip we jumped off the boat and almost got ate up by a 15 foot hammerhead!! Do not jump off the boat and swim too far off if you’re in the ocean. We thought we'd cool off because it was so hot and we weren't catching much, oops. The boat is 38 ft and has a tuna door so we just slipped right into the back of the boat and jumped in.
On this particular trip we did the bottom fishing and caught 12 Grouper (snowy whites, etc...). In attendance this day were Gabe, Margaret, Nicole, Jordan, Shayne, and myself.Nicole and Jordan were catching decent size Grouper throughout the day, but the excitement really came when Margaret & I both had fish on the lines at the same time, it was chaos, we were crossing lines and Shayne helped Margaret and Nicole helped me... Gabe kept the boat steady and watched the lines from above.
They are so heavy to reel up, but we have an electric reel that you push a button and it reels it up, you just have to hold on!! The pole is bent big time as it is coming up from 200 feet deep! Once you see the fish and see how big it actually is its like,"oh jeez" how do you get it on the boat? But that’s what Shayne is there for, he grabs the gaff, sticks the fish and hoist's it over the boat.He then unhooks it and puts the fish in the "cooler".
While trying to get the fish to take a picture with you, you’ll notice how slimy it is once it is out of the water. Then you have to figure out how to hold it. In this case I grabbed it through the gills the wrong way and ended up shredding my index finger a little... The Grouper have razor sharp gill plates. Shayne is really holding the fish; I'm just holding it on top of his hands... (I'm injured in the picture) :o).After we got back to dock we filet and ate them at the marina, that was the best.
Best regards,
Eva & the “Hallerback” Crew!
