It was a sunny and calm Bimini morning as Harry Vernon III and I headed for a yellowtail snapper spot which, for us, tenders a best-odds guarantee of catching them. However, upon our arrival, things were vastly different.
With barely 1 knot of dirty, green-water flow—versus a moderate royal blue current—we anchored, chummed heavily and crushed cero and king mackerel, horse-eye jacks, big blue runners, ’cudas and other assorted predators, but not a single yellowtail snapper. Something was amiss.
Having Simrad’s StructureScan side-scan sonar technology, which was new at the time, I activated it to confirm the absence of yellowtail prior to leaving. To our surprise, a large “ball” of ’tails appeared some 50 feet directly off my port side console! I made a cast up current of the boat,…