Apalach Grouper fishing 4/17/10
Posted: April 20th, 2010, 8:33 pm
Talked about going inshore but I got a call from my Dad last Wednesday saying he was itching to go offshore. He said he knew a guy that was available and once I looked at the weather, I was sold. We had room for six, so my Dad called a couple of his buddies and I called my bartender Millertime. Seas were predicted at 1-2 or less than one foot so we were feeling pretty psyched on Friday. My Dad said the wind was howling at SGI Thursday and Friday but I promised him that NOAA was never wrong on a weekend weather prediction. 
Saturday morning we met up, loaded the coolers and took bets on whether the wind was going to cooperate or not. The ride out was pretty smooth and once we got about 10 miles out the water really started to get slick. Around 9:30 we got to around 70 feet and started looking for bait. It took us a while to load up the live well but we ended up with enough good sized squirrel fish and pig fish to give us just about all we needed.
Took off to around 90 feet to try our luck. Since Dad sponsored the trip, we decided to let him toss the first one down.
Spot one and two didn't do much for us, so me and Millertime thought that a beer might help the bite.
Turns out the beer really didn't help too much, but 120 feet of water did. Had a lot of grouper come up about twenty feet off the bottom, but all we got to the boat was a half eaten bait. Fortunately it didn't take too long to get some slime on the boat.
We landed a couple shorts and some nice snapper, but the bite didn't really turn on until late afternoon. We hooked up with a couple reds but got our limit of gags in about 20 minutes on our next to last stop. The good thing is that the majority of the fish were quality fish. I wish I had some bent rod shots but when we were on them, it was on fire. Not a lot of time for pics.
Overall, the sees were ridiculously calm all day which made for a great ride back after we got tired of high fiving.
Awesome day of Meat fishing!
Saturday morning we met up, loaded the coolers and took bets on whether the wind was going to cooperate or not. The ride out was pretty smooth and once we got about 10 miles out the water really started to get slick. Around 9:30 we got to around 70 feet and started looking for bait. It took us a while to load up the live well but we ended up with enough good sized squirrel fish and pig fish to give us just about all we needed.
Took off to around 90 feet to try our luck. Since Dad sponsored the trip, we decided to let him toss the first one down.
Spot one and two didn't do much for us, so me and Millertime thought that a beer might help the bite.
Turns out the beer really didn't help too much, but 120 feet of water did. Had a lot of grouper come up about twenty feet off the bottom, but all we got to the boat was a half eaten bait. Fortunately it didn't take too long to get some slime on the boat.
We landed a couple shorts and some nice snapper, but the bite didn't really turn on until late afternoon. We hooked up with a couple reds but got our limit of gags in about 20 minutes on our next to last stop. The good thing is that the majority of the fish were quality fish. I wish I had some bent rod shots but when we were on them, it was on fire. Not a lot of time for pics.
Overall, the sees were ridiculously calm all day which made for a great ride back after we got tired of high fiving.
Awesome day of Meat fishing!
