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Spent a great Saturday fishing on south Shoal.. Water was stained and a little grassy. A neat weed line was present which produced some great Spanish mackerel. My wife, son, and his girl friend had a blast. She caught a 20" trout on her first cast. We used 1/8 oz. jig heads (color did not matter) with new penny gulps. We kept 10 trout and caught quite a few more keepers and a ton of shorts that we released. The ladyfish were relentless. We kept 10 Spanish Mackerel in the 2-5lb range. Caught several blue fish. Non Stop action!!!!! Amazingly the trout had no worms when I cleaned them!! (I would post some photos, but I have not found the instructions on how to do this).

Where is the south shoal?

Nice work Johnny. That is a cool little area. I bet you’ll see more boats out there the next time you go.

South shoal extends from the koa area of alligator point to almost the 26 bouey. It is where the boat ran aground when that boat tried to make the gulf crossing during Ernesto ( I think that was the storm)... if I remember correctly, 2 of the 3 passed.

I saw the weedline Saturday, and TONS of bait, but we didn't stop for the action.

We were planning to Tarpon fish today. It was a beautiful calm morning with a few poons rolling. We got into a school of a jillion catfish and could not keep a bait in the water. We moved about 1/4 mile and tried again.. No catfish, however a 10 ft hammerhead followed our chum line to the boat and struck one of the rods. The 80lb mono leader held for about 30 second before he bit it in two. Tried one more place that is usually pretty good and no tarpon were there, or they were not biting.

So we headed back out to the spot we found Saturday. the lady fish were still abundant, blue fish had replaced the Spanish and all were nice sized. We picked up a couple of 16" trout and caught some shorts before the wind really started blowing. A Great day with my son fishing even though we missed out on the tarpon!!