How he got that 8-0 hook in his mouth I'll never know. Next were numerous Key West grunts, some seabass, and several short gags. Nothing worth mentioning. Next I tried some grunt filets. Didn't get the weight all the way on the bottom and ...BOOM... a keeper red grouper. Same thing again on the next drop. Numerous shorts (darm my honest hide!!!) and virtually nothing else.
Then (drum roll here) I hooked up a spanish sardine and Roland switched back to LYs. MEGABOOM!!! A double hookup of redfish. Not the little guys, the kind you see on the Florida Sportsman cover. Hey, that's MY FISH..where's my smiling face!! (On the cover of the ROlling Stone...sorry, wrong magazine).
Kudos to Capt. Jay for his always good grouper rigs and Tom Keels for demonstrating the correct way to fish grunt filets. (On previous trips, of course.)
OK, back to business. Final count was two keeper grouper, a red, numerous seabass (they are GREAT!!! in gumbo) and some grunts. Oh, I also caught a triggerfish. What a pain to clean! I hope they taste as good as I hear they do.
P.S. I fished October with my father-in-law around St. George. The flounder were everywhere. So were the baitfish. Look around the barges working on the new bridge, there are the baitfish.
P.P.S. I hooked a doormat flounder near a bridge piling and almost got him in the net when he let go. I read in some fishing magazine that flounder willl sometimes just drift down to the bottom when that happens and they will not move. I dropped my line down where I lost him and BOOM!!! In the net. Some fish are too dumb to live.
Sorry for any typos...I cut the #@$%*&$ out of my finger cleaning the red.
