A Day in the Life of a Florida Fisherman

Captain Tom Olyarnyk is a member of the Gulf of Mexico Reef Fish Shareholders’ Alliance and a longline grouper fisherman for Gulf Wild™ from Cortez, Florida.

Fishing as far as 100 miles off shore means his average “day” actually lasts ten to twelve days. This is how it typically goes:

5am –  Morning commute, a 25-mile drive from his home to the boat. “It’s a real pain with city traffic,” he said. Along the way, Capt. Tom picks up his crew in Sarasota.

6am – Check supplies: 5,000-6,000 pounds of ice; 650 gallons of fuel, 1,000 pounds of bait – mullet, thread herring, and squid (though less squid these days because turtles enjoy it). Oh, and food for 10-12 manly meals.

7am-10am – Load food, and make any necessary repairs, such as broken switches, pumps, breakers, lights, or motors.

10am – The 44-foot bow wheelhouse vessel, named Neptune, departs the dock.

10am-2pm – Diesel powered engines power the vessel between 30 to 100 miles into the Gulf.

2pm-3pm – Bait hooks and ready snaps (or snoods, those short lines that attach to the heavy cable they unspool to fall to the bottom). As many as 750 hooks and snaps can attach to the three miles of cable they will drop to the bottom-feeding Red Snapper and Grouper.

3pm-7pm – For hours each day, the crew of Neptune will bait hooks, attach snaps and release cable over 3-mile stretches over again – as many as six to eight runs each day. Fifty-inch floatable red buoy balls mark the ends of each cable run. It typically takes 40-45 minutes to set gear, and 30 minutes to soak. Then the ship backtracks to reclaim cable and fish.

The man who set hooks on the way out is the hauler on the way in. He reaches over the rail and removes each clip, tossing hooks into a small crate and fish into a 55-gallon well. The man who baited hooks on the way out will gut fish on the way in. On average, a fish every 50 hooks is decent – a hundred pounds each set is a good day.

7pm – Speaking of time, it’s getting late. Neptune gets in as many runs as daylight allows; as late as 9:30pm in summer. Winter is different; dinner and bed by 7. After all, there’s always tomorrow – and at least nine more days at sea.