We made our first stop for bait at the green can at Dog Island and loaded up with nice blue runners, threadfins and the ever-present razor bellies. After the bait spooked we ran to the bell buoy and started sabikiing up bait. The first cast yielded 5 razor bellies, 4 of which were quickly inhaled by the school of 5-10 pound cobia at the buoy. There must have been 6 or 8 of them all sub legal. I tossed a cobia jig out and hooked up with what seemed to be a monster but after a 5-minute battle it turned out to be one of the 5 pounders foul hooked in the side. We decided that we should go on to O-Tower to get bait and not loose any more sabikis. When we arrived at the O, some of Americas Finest were working on it.
We loaded up on about 2 dozen of the biggest cigar minnows Ive ever seen and took off for the deep. Our first stop was in 108 feet SW of the S Tower on some of Sawbones numbers that he had done well on. My first drop yielded a beautiful red snapper about 20 long. A short one for Sawbones and one for me left us scratching our heads, but just then I bowed up on a good fish, but it didnt fight like a grouper or snapper. Turns out it was my biggest king ever. Estimated weight about 25 pounds.
After putting him in the box the flatline started screaming and yielded yet another king, this one only about 12 pounds.
As we made a circle to redrift the hole, some friends decided to join us.
Try as we might we could not get anything else to bite in this area, so we headed back towards the Exxon Template to try for an AJ. But, we could not coax the AJs to bite on anything. I think with the still mill pond like conditions they could see us, and wanted no part of it. The cool thing was the dozens of huge barracudas that were stacked on the Template. I think they might have had something to do with the reluctant AJs.
Hitting one spot after another making our way in, we just could not find any fish willing to bite, other than 2 3-pound Spanish Mackerel that hit freelined cigar minnows. Finally we made it back to 65 feet and boated 4 gags, the biggest going 29.
Finally at 3:00 pm the wind picked up to 5 mph and we decided to call it a day. With the wind at our backs we ran in at 40 mph and still no rain in site. Not a stellar day by any means, but it sure beats working.
