We hit the outside ramp at 7 a.m. and with Casey manning the bowline I floated the boat off the trailer. Twenty minutes and 3 throws of the castnet later we had some 60-80 baits in the livewell and were headed offshore.
With lots of bait, my best fishing partner aboard, a full tank of petro, calm seas, slack tide underway, and an unrestricted day we pointed the bow towards a spot in 78 feet of water I hadn’t fished in over a year. Visions of Casey playing with red snapper and larger gag were on my mind. However, I’m easily distracted running offshore and in 55 feet we ran over an interesting spot and circled back to fish it. Before we anchored I motored around a bit and found other interesting spots and we marked the most significant ones. Upon anchoring the bite was slow but enough to keep us occupied.
Casey with a nice red
Casey hooked up
First keeper for the day
I even caught a fish (pic by Casey)
We moved around a bit throughout the day between 50 & 55 feet and found a number of new spots holding grouper. In one spot, now aptly named FireTruk13, we caught 13 red grouper with 12 of them of legal size. I’ve never caught that many legal reds at one spot so that was unique. We ended up not leaving this area and developed it further by finding new numbers to fish.
Casey with another for the fishbox
At one point we had a flock of small sharks swim in hitting the flatline, my grouper rod, and Casey’s bait rod all at the same time. There were at least 6 sharks swimming off the stern so we moved off to get away from them.
Tussling with a shark on lite gear
This was a hoot for Casey
The last fish of the day for Casey was interesting to watch as Casey couldn’t raise the rod to get the fish off the bottom. I kept telling him he was going to lose it but eventually helped him lift the rod up. He was quite proud of that gag.
Casey’s 10.2 lb gag
Low & high tide was 0948 (1.9 ft) and 1530 hrs (4.4 ft), respectively. Running offshore the water temperature was 81.3° F in 22 feet, 80.6 ° F in 35 feet, and 79.8 ° F in 50 feet. The moon was 2 days post new moon. There were a fair amount of baitpods present but the bonita didn’t make themselves noticied like they did 2 days previous. Overall the bite was slow and kinda timid. The red groupers were out in force as we boated nineteen (19) legal reds (!), only keeping two of course. We only fished live bait and I can unequivocally state that grouper don’t like Atlantic Bumpers but they liked the live scaled sardines and threadfins. On the way in we fished a spot in 38 feet of water and the baits were fowled with brown algae. In contrast our baits fished in 50 – 55 feet were not fowled at all.
We finished the day with 7 grouper and a few large white grunts & black seabass. With the exception of hitting one number on the way out (1 keeper red grouper) all our fish were taken on new spots, making this a pretty productive day on the water. And a pretty awesome Fathers Day.
HooYah!!
Brian
Thanks for sharing BBB.
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