Well what a holidy, what can I say. If you haven't already had a look at the
freedomoftheseas.com do so. This is the mother of all cruise ships at a cost of 170 million dollars they have left no stone unturned. We flew from Dublin on the 21st Mar to Chicargo for a conection to Miami where we picked up the Freedom Cruise Ship the day after. What an amazing site it was at the dock, just enormous. Anyway this should be about fishin so, we landed at St Maarten (3rd island stop)on the US virgin Islands and took a small open 40ft fishing vessel full of seven people to fish the beautiful turquios seas. I didn't care if I hadn't a fish all day,this was just great. Sitting drinking ice cool Buds and bottom fishing for whatever came up. Don't know if anyone else has fished this area before but the guys on board said there was some nice fish around. My first was a long thing which the captain called a Whiting? then I got a small snapper, and another colourful creature which no one could identify. Most of our catch did not exceed a few pounds, but when one of the passengers hooked a rather larger fish. He came up with a head which looked like it would have been quite a good one had the shark not taken it. All in all it was a short trip out of St Maartin but like I said the fishing was secondary, we should have booked a longer day trip. But since I propossed to my girlfriend at dinner in front of 1500 people one evening on the ship the least I could do was to pay her more attention than the fish. So yep i'm engaged but the salmon fishing is getting better at home, been back for a week or so now and have had a fresh runner already. It just kept running and took my fly. Who cares my tan still looks good for a pasty white Irishman HaHa. Photos to follow. Hey Regards SDD
