Carrabelle 5/7

[Tallybraska]

I had a buddy get a 43# Cobia off of C tower last week so I decided to head out to see if any of his luck had stayed behind. We made it out there mid-morning after a fairly smooth ride, which was a welcome change. No luck on the tower though. Quite a few 20 inch Gags that are fun to catch but didn't even interest the 20+ barracuda that were circling the tower. We decided to head back and see what was going on closer to shore. Stopped at a wreck not far off St. George, in only about 20 feet of water and bottom reader showed a lot of fish. We put out some pin fish and some shrimp and immediately started catching blues. Then, my girlfriend got a pretty good bite using just a live shrimp with a jig head. She started pulling it up and suddenly the "pretty good" bite turned into a REALLY GOOD bite. What happened next was pretty cool to watch. She was using a medium spinning rod with 15lb braid and everyone in the boat was watching when she pulled up a very large Gag. As soon as the fish got to the surface, about five feet from the boat, the big Gag opened its mouth and out came another Gag, the one that originally took the shrimp and was hooked. The big guy swam back down and we brought the first fish into the boat to measure him before putting him back, he was 18 inches and almost completely inside the mouth of the big fella when they came up. Quite an unexpected show.

Shortly after that a pod of porpoise showed up and the bluefish immediately stopped biting. We left there and went inside of dog island were we got several mackerel, two reds (one slot) and a mixed bag of other stuff.

All in all a good day. We also fished late Friday when we got down there and early Sunday too, but only mackerel both days. The wind on Sunday really shortened the fishing day. We quickly decided our gas money would be better spent driving a truck over to Boss Oyster rather than pushing my boat around in 20 knot west winds.

It was nice to finally find a couple redfish, but, to our surprise, not a single trout all weekend. Sounds like a lot of people are having the same problem.

[tallyseminole]

Good report! I bet the big gag grouper on light tackle was real fun bringing up to the boat even though he vomited up the smaller one. Haha.

[Tallybraska]

Yeah, even though the big fish swam away without a photo, the girlfriend still had a great time just getting him up to the surface. She said her heart was beating so fast she had to sit out for a bit and gather herself. I'm pretty sold on braid though. Light tackle isn't so light anymore. I just wish I knew for sure if the fish could see it.