About ten years ago when I was mating for John L. Dudas on the L&H, Leo Rodriguez would fish with us quite a bit this time of year. Then, Leo disappeared, and I had not heard form him until he booked us for a morning half day. I was very happy to see Leo that morning as he sported his L&H tee shirt. On the way out Leo told me he had tried fishing up in Fort Lauderdale and Hillsboro, but was unhappy with the effort and results. Leo said he was unable to find an operation like the L&H and was happy to be back. With the boat fresh out of the boatyard, I knew everything would be to his liking, but now we need to have a good catch to get Leo back. James had the day off from school so he joined Jim, Travis, me and Leo's group. After getting bait we headed offshore and found a huge area of sea weed. I was excited, but the excitement proved to be short lived as the sea weed had no bait or life at all and our hot spot turned cold. Further out we went and then I found a current edge with some life on it. We quickly got a nice mahi to take the pressure off and gave hope that the current edge was holding fish. A few minutes later, James spotted a mahi feeding in the weed and when we got closer there were ten nice fish there. Everyone sprang into action and we boated every fish in the school. All of us were happy (especially me because I wanted so badly to have a good catch today). Forty minutes later we found some more nice dolphin and things were looking good. Then the edge went straight into the reef line and forced us to fish much shallower than we would like. Not to be denied, we adjusted our spread a little bit and the change worked as we quickly boated a nice, 35 pound wahoo! This is Leo's favorite eating fish and it could not have come at a better time. We continued to get action as we trolled the edge of the reef with tuna, bonita and a few more mahi. Just before heading back in, we made a quick stop and got four snowy groupers just to put an exclamation point on Leo's reunion!
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