In the deep ocean water around Hawai’i there are a number of buoys anchored. The have no navigation purpose, they are there solely to attract fish. They are referred to as “FADs,” Fish Attracting Devices. In the open ocean anything floating on the surface can quickly become a FAD. Logs, rafts of seaweed, boats…

We had been motoring for a bit, and came across a dramatic current line in the Gulf Stream. The water temperature was 79 degrees on one side, one hundred feet to the northeast it was 76. Lots of weed and small fish. The sonar was crowded with small fish arches from the surface down to 200 feet. Standard fishing advice is to always “fish the edges,” and there wasn’t going to be any better edge out here than this! We stopped, and I got out my jigging rod.

In no time Harmonie’s shadow attracted lots of baby bar jack, bite sized tidbits for anything we’d be interested in. The variety of small fish that accumulate at a place like this is staggering.

A few minutes later a school of a dozen mahi-mahi come cruising down the line. They were active, and feeding, lit up bright green and neon blue. They circled the boat, just drifting there like that we were quite the fishy FAD. I hooked a nice one on my first drop of the jig—and after a great fight, the hook pulled out boat side. By the time we got recombobulated we had lost the temperature break, and the fish.

We headed in closer to shore, and tried some deep jigging without any luck. Toward sunset, the wind picked up again, and we were off.

We will be entering the Chesapeake Bay tomorrow morning. It looks like we be dropping anchor at Norfolk for 24 hours to let a north wind blow out and make our passage up the bay more pleasant.