After spending a month getting the boat ready and taking out or first group of the season, we finally have a few weeks to prepare for the next four months of fishing. An important step to this process is building and deploying FAD’s out in the ocean. A “FAD” is an acronym for “fish aggregating device”. Much of the ocean is like a barren desert and these “fads” are the perfect way to create structure in areas of the ocean where there are none. Fish will congregate around any tiny object floating at sea, and FADS are an excellent way to insure places where you can consistently go to catch fish. Building a proper FAD that will last a long time takes a lot of work. We collected sand from the beach, purchased Portland cement, rocks, 55 gallon drums, and rebar. We cut our drums in half, added our rebar and poured our concrete. Next step we add swivels, cable, rope, and floats along with the other structure, typically bamboo, palmettos, tarps, whatever you want to use. We then transport the drums to the beach and roll them out past the waves and pull them with the boat away from the danger zone in the surf. We do this at low tide and tie the drum anchors below the boat using a lot of manpower to hoist them up the side of the boat, each anchor weighs several hundred pounds. Deploying the FADS takes all day as we have to drive the boat very slow. It couldn’t have gone any better this time because on our way out we came across an area with several converging currents, birds, bait, and a piece of bamboo that was covered in life. We could have caught mahi and tuna until our arms fell off but after catching 10 or so we continued on our way to dropping the FAD’s out. Stumbling upon an absolute feeding frenzy was a great addition to a long day out on the water.
