Author: Capt. Corky Decker

There are two places in the world where this fishery even exists and only a handful of fishermen alive are really professionals. There is only one place I know of where they have legendry harpooners; a small East coast harbor that has been the home for generations of the best harpooners in the world, Perkins Cove in Ogunquit Maine. Back in the 1950’s Carl McIntyre moved from Small Point to Ogunquit Maine. Carl was a lobsterman, and in the summers Carl and his boy, Sonny, chased bluefin. The McIntyre’s brought with them the ‘Down East’ trade of harpooning bluefin. In…

Tackle Junkie – Fishing Tackle I just knew this was going to be a bit of a worry, little profit margin problems, when all the cool new stuff ends up on my boats. I look at a new lure where my cost is only 7 or 8 bucks, well in that case I’ll take three of them off the shelf, toss em on the front seat of the truck. All my fishing buddies can’t wait to see what I haul out of the endless plastic bags on the steam to where ever the bite is on, but I’ve learned to…

Gold Bluefin Tuna The North Atlantic giant bluefin migration, has changed over the past 20 years, the fish in years past were spending the summers in the Gulf of Maine to ‘The Rips’ off of Yarmouth, Nova Scotia. Today the main body stays offshore following the Gulf Stream north past Georges and Browns Banks, the majority of adult fish making a bee line for their summer feeding grounds in the herring rich waters of Northern Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island. To reach these waters the bluefin travel the Eastern shores of Nova Scotia around Cape Breton Island in July and…

Daily thunderstorms, heavy showers, huge tides, full moon, no bait, muddy water, hotter than a California wildfire and water temperatures you would find on the equator made for the worse flats fishing we have had since January. Perfect! Been waiting for this, nobody is catching much of anything the last few days. After the 4th of July weekend madness the flats were quiet once again but the fishing is terrible. The hot fishing is happening offshore on the gag grouper bite in the waters north of Tampa, not in 4 feet of water. I have been waiting for Neptune to…

Bass Life – Florida Fishing Florida fishing, where else in the world can you leave a port pretty much anywhere in the State and go catch a blue marlin, cast a fly at a bonefish, legally gig a flounder, or turn inland and set bush hooks for huge catfish, use a cane pole and catch bluegill, world class large mouth bass, and massive crappie. For so much of my life I looked at fishing as if; if it didn’t have a bill, it was just bait. But living in Florida, my eyes have been opened to so many wonderful new…

We have all seen it, fish aggressively feeding, but on what? Throw every fly in the box at a rainbow, yell at both deckhands to change out every lure in the spread to get that blue to jump on, or watch your buddy catch fish on every cast while you tie on yet something else. When you are the guy smoking everyone else around you it is pretty cool thing, when you watch the guy take you to school, it is humbling at best. But chances are it isn’t you, but a simple choice of having the right live bait…

When I skied 100 days a year in Alaska I thought it would be perfect to own a ski shop, not so much to make a living but to be able to test every new pair of boards that came out that year. My write offs would have been huge, I probably wouldn’t have made it two quarters, but I sure wish I pulled the trigger back then. Well I’m not making the same mistake today almost 20 years later the passion is fishing instead of skiing, and yeap I own a store that sells tackle. I am really hoping…

Fly Fishing Match Hatch Being a fly fisherman since birth, I have spent my life trying to imitate ‘live bait’ From tying the perfect red salmon egg, for Alaskan big bow’s, to an eel fly to trick a free swimming cobia in the Panhandle, the more it looked acted like the real thing the better. Now I do use live bait, my largest three marlin both blue and black were tagged using a bridled livey, and it is much more fun floating out a couple of pinfish while at anchor, kicked back, wine glass in hand, and rod in a…

Franklin Park Conservatory Retired Plant If you know where to look, you can find this anywhere in the world, a down east harbor masters office, a ski shack at the base of the Matterhorn, or at a power plant water discharge channel in New Port Richey, Florida; in the early hours of the day old men tend to congregate as if drawn in by a magnet. They will always welcome the younger generation, they always have great stories to tell you and if you listen you will learn a lot about where you are standing this morning. I have always…

With the exception of the Indian ocean and the East coast of Africa I have at one time or another fished the worlds water, meeting some incredible fishermen and learning methods and techniques from so many masters that I have used to build my book of knowledge. One fisherman in the Hawaiian Islands (a place not known to take new arrival outsiders or ‘Main-landers’ under their wing) immediately comes to mind, when I think back on my lifetime of experiences. About fifteen years ago I meet Mike Christie and his 31 Moppie ‘Tuia’ which he keeps on the west shores…

Whether you call them dorado, mahi mahi, or dolphin fish, this is one of the highest prized game fish found anywhere in the world. Providing an incredible fight on light tackle, launching to the heavens, screaming drags in long blistering runs and they dog it out right up to the time the gaff sinks in. Don’t relax when the fish is onboard, because they aren’t finished! These fish can be down right dangerous on deck, you should never turn your back on one or you’ll end up with a size 10/0 hook imbedded somewhere in your body! Mahi mahi are…

Cobia fishing on the Panhandle is a unique fishery with extremely competitive season-long and weekend tournaments. It seems like every year the same boats and teams place in the top slots. “Full Pull” always catches the first fish of the year and is in the running for top boat, the “Papi” owned by Charles Morgan and captained by Kevin Moak, and what ever boat Kevin’s older brother Justin is fishing on are assured to be in the running. I am new to the area and this remarkable fishery, but have been very fortunate to fish all of the tournaments the…

A business opportunity found us making a move to the Tampa Bay area a few months ago, the timing came right before hunting season. Finding a place to hang a couple of tree stands was a puzzle at best, so I started to ask a lot of questions. Local knowledge is the best source of information to any newcomer, and when I’m new to an area I seek out the locals. If you fly into the Bahamas you are unlikely to grab your fly rod, walk the flats at the resort and expect to catch a 10-pound bonefish; the same…

One of my very best friends builds custom high end game boats, the boat building business in today’s economy is extremely hard, and new construction is at a standstill. There are also so many really incredible deals on used boats that you can get so much more for your money buying used than building a new boat, and waiting a year or more to get your hands on her. In the past three years we have purchased two used boats (our Florida based 45′ game boat, and a Maine 32′ harpoon boat) and for these two boats we paid just…

There are hunters, and then there is Jeff. In a comparison, I consider my self to be in that one percent that catches ninety-nine percent of the fish; Jeff is that one percent that puts whatever he hunts in the truck. Jeff Chesser owns Harbor Diesel in Destin Florida, and is the best boat mechanic in the area; he also hunts, a lot! I met Jeff a few years ago when I moved to Destin, he was referred to me by other fishermen to help with my “beyond me moments” on my engines. In August Jeff was wearing camouflage; I…

They say Long Island in the Southern Bahamas group is the most scenic Island in all of the Bahamas; with its white sandy beaches on the southwest coast to world famous Deans blue hole (the worlds deepest at over 600 feet) 5 miles northwest of Clarence Town. The Island is properly named being over 80 miles long and only 4 miles at its widest point. The population is only about 4,000 friendly islanders who do everything they can to make your stay on the Island a magical experience! With the 500 fathom drop off a mere 4 nm miles from…

There are very few untapped marlin grounds remaining; the few remote places left to us require a mother ship and a game boat with some serious legs to fish for success. With this mode of exploration you are going in blind, learning the waters as you go. I’m not saying being the first to fish an area isn’t very special; there just isn’t anything like flying into a remote place, jumping onboard a well equipped game boat and going fishing with a captain that knows every inch of his home waters like we know our own backyards. Finding these ingredients…

We all have our own favorite seasons and here in the beautiful, plentiful, Panhandle we have a lot to choose from! No matter if it is red drum in the bay or the first blue marlin showing up in the Gulf, each month seems to bring a new challenge along with the changing seasons. I happen to be an offshore guy, and consider anything under an 80-chair outfit as a bait rod. So the first cold fronts of fall and winter must be torture for me or you think I’ll probably just migrate with the billfish down to the Keys?…

It’s ironic but sometimes it takes something bad to happen to open our eyes to a different path…In the spring of 2010 the disastrous Gulf oil spill shut down more and more water every day. We Panhandle fisherman needed to find alternate ways to use our boats that summer. Living in Destin we are extremely fortunate to have the vast Choctawhatchee bay in our back yard, and as my wife and I are discovering a bay can be a great time! Stretching from New Orleans to Apalachicola, the intracoastal water way and its associated bays can be explored in anything…

In 1988, just three years out of college, 28-year-old Ted Everett moved to Chipley, Florida to manage his family’s 5,000-acre property. His dad predicted it would be about three months before Ted would be back in Georgia. But, that never happened. Ted had a plan from the beginning and started to transform the land to fit his vision” by selective cutting the timber, building ponds and with controlled burns. In 1992, Ted had around 300 acres scattered in a few ideal locations to start what today is Northwest Florida’s premier bobwhite quail hunting preserve”:Hard Labor Creek Plantation. Hard Labor Creek…

It is that time of year again, early wood duck season! Duck hunting in 80-degree weather, gators and bugs, makes for some weird, non-traditional hunting, but for that one week in September I’m in the woods. We are really lucky to have so many opportunities in the panhandle of Florida to enjoy what the outdoors has to offer year around. We go from tagging white marlin to hanging deer stands within in weeks of each other. The fall triggers an itch in me that just has to be scratched, and my labrador retriever is absolutely insistent on a fall duck…

Corky Decker: Friend lost Billy McIntyre was a living legend among New England bluefin tuna harpooners. We grew up together in the 1970’s and early 80’s, we were the Perkins Cove rats of Ogunquit, Maine, the wild ones, the generation that fished hard and stayed up late. We lived and breathed bluefin tuna and Billy was the best of us. He fished with his dad, Sonny, and for years the two of them caught more than the rest of us combined. Billy was lost late last Thursday or early Friday morning, about a mile off the cove. He had gone…

We all dream of breaking records, with billfish it seems everyone’s goal is a grander, well lets take this one step further; The “one off’s”. In the ‘Old Man and The Sea’, Hemingway’s 1954 classic; his fish in the story was a massive blue marlin. Santiago’s fish was described simply as “there has never been such a fish”. I can only imagine Hemingway thinking beyond grand, maybe a tonner when he wrote this masterpiece. How realistic is it, and which species of game fish have a chance of reaching such enormous sizes? I think we have at least five different…

A blistering first run that can challenge the drag system on even the largest marlin reels; some expert’s say it is the hardest, fastest first run of any game fish, period. A mouth full of razor blades that will cut though most leader materials and the strike so violent, and fast, that it causes your heart to skip a beat. On a fly rod, abiding by IGFA rules, the wahoo is one of the greatest challenges in our sport, and you must be ready to deal with the frustration factor because ‘believe you me’ (Vanuatu for ‘not kidding’); ya gonna…