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  • Sea Serpents or Not!

    Little Miss Judy’s Believe It or Not Story!

    While bottom fishing at the Gulf Stream the first time I ever caught a not so big soap fish I immediately threw it in my live well so that it could hopefully survive! I, at first thought it was a juvenile grouper. After a few minutes I looked to check on the small fish and here’s what I found…all of my live baits were lying dead on the bottom of my tank! So therefore I didn’t do that again!

    Back in the seventies we used to take quite a few overnight bottom fishing trips to the blue waters of the Gulf Stream. On this particular over night fishing trip three 30 foot T-Crafts boats were involved. (Miss Jerry, Miss Judy, and Miss Joan) Back then it was decided that if you booked an overnight trip you had at least take two boats. Well, this particular group had about 18 fishermen that wanted to stay overnight at the good old Gulf Stream. So therefore it took three boats to accommodate this party. After loading up the boats, we finally started “making way” at a strong 15 knots! Back then this was the top speed for the charter boats in this area. A one-way trip to the Gulf Stream took approximately 41/2 to 5 hours. Before making this run I never remember checking on the weather forecast. As a matter of fact there wasn’t any instance of weather broadcasts back in the good old days. My father used to say, “if it’s blowing hard we won’t go, if it’s not we are out of here!” In other words, “we will deal with tomorrow’s weather tomorrow!”

    On this particular day there were calm winds and prefect sea conditions. Our plans were to get to about 200 feet of water; bottom fish till about an hour before dark, and then anchor up all three boats until the next morning. All went smoothly from the arrival to entire daytime fishing event. The bottom line, we caught lots of fish. After anchoring up some fishermen decided to fish while others wanted to just relax and enjoy the solid pitch-black ocean. After midnight I decided to take a few winks. I had several people watching, as well as those on our other boats, for ships and of course sea monsters of the night. You know it’s funny, you certainly do hear a lot of strange noises when anchored up without the engines running. I always got this question, “what made that noise.” My standard answer, which was most likely wrong was, “It was a whale!”
    After a bit of small talk I was looking forward to leaning back in my helm chair and taking a quick nap. However, even though my eyes were closed I kept all the background noise in check. As I got my “forty winks” different noises started moving in and taking over the current regular sounds. I immediately stood up to see my young first mate with a hammer in his hand. Before I could say, “what the heck are you doing?” he slammed the hammer down towards the deck obviously missing the target.

    Had I not been watching this noise would have sent me screaming up from my half-a-sleep mode! Before I could scream, “stop” another wild swing of the hammer had taken place. This hard blow clearly hit the deck, because I heard fiberglass “just-a-cracking!”
    Before I could seize control of my mate’s madness I looked down on the deck and there must have been six or seven large long eel looking creatures. These creatures were wiggling about like at fish, but it was clear they weren’t! From this exact moment these were sea serpents

    It was dark and everywhere they shined the flashlight another so-called “sea serpent” was in the spotlight. Not only that, but there were lots of hooks flying about with the movements of these green slimy looking snake things. A lot of things ran through my mind such as I had just seen a show on the television about sea snakes and their death causing capabilities. Although these creatures didn’t have the exact same shape I couldn’t completely rule that out. Then there was this thing that I had read about how these big female eels migrate to the Gulf Stream to spawn. Now these snakes’ types were about the right color for possibly being conger eels. However, these bad boys had inverted teeth. So therefore the possible eel thing was so called immediately ruled out. They weren’t moray eels, because the movement made didn’t match up to their amazing ability to removing a hook instantly. With all these things going through my head I had to grab hold and say, “I don’t know what these things are so therefore we have got to throw them back!” Since I didn’t have any sort of identification booklet on board. I couldn’t look them up. Not only that I didn’t have a camera, either. This is where my partial “photogenic memory” would come into to play.

    From the instance these so called serpents were released big tales were spun! We all agreed that they were about 5 to 6 feet long and had a body shape of a snake, which was just about the size of a 31/2 pipe. Apparently we had a plumber on board on this fishing trip. Since none of us had taken a picture tales were told for sure!
    About 15 years after this happened we caught another one, but it wasn’t as big. When we looked this fish up it appeared to be what was called a “sand tile.” I took a long look and a picture. However, the sand tile didn’t look anything like what we had on the deck. So therefore “Sea Serpents” they must have been! And that’s my story and I’m sticking to it!



    Thanks for reading! Captain Judy


    Captain Judy Helmey
    912 897 4921
    www.missjudycharters.com