As mentioned before the hump is a piece of real estate about 7 miles off the reef due east of Islamorada in the Keys. It is located in about 500 to 600 ft of water. It is the size of two football fields and comes up to 280 ft of the surface. The drill is to put a live bait down about 200ft and wait for the bite – which will come on almost every drift over this hump in the water. The bite is a very large AJ ( AmberJack ). These fish are also called reef donkeys. We have caught a number of these fish over the years in the 40 to 50 lb range. After catching one of these fish the general agreement is that it is one of the hardest fighting fish in the Ocean. On this day the bait went in and within 10 minutes we were hooked up. What makes this different than any other time we have caught one of these fish is the size of the AJs’ on the hump. The one we were hooked up to had to be close to 100lbs. After about 15minutes of holding onto a Penn 80 wide we were bite off by a very large shark. The head of the fish came up with no body attached. The head alone weighted close to 25lbs. The shark that bite it off swallowed in one bite close to 80lbs of fish! Over the next 45 minutes I saw two boats actually land one of these fish that had to weight close to 80lbs. The world record for these fish is 145lbs. I am confident that prowling these waters on the hump is a world record AJ and very likely a world record Tiger Shark that dines on them. The Ocean can be a tough and dangerous place to live!

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