Who's going??

[Jhults11]

One of the last weekends to go offshore...1-2 all weekend...I'm goIng Sunday....who else is going?

[FishWithChris]

We'll be heading out tomorrow... I'll letcha know how we fare

[Tidedancer]

Walking out the door in a few minuets. See ya out on da big pond.

[Ranaman]

Chuck you said you went but I don't see a report!

[Jhults11]

Lol yeah left the dock Sunday at 0700 to flat calm seas and dense fog. Found 4 boats doing circles at the mouth of river and they asked if they could play follow the leader with me being the leader since I had a track saved. I obliged and off went the brigade. Soon as we hit the sea buoy they went all directions and we stopped on the flats to pick up some bait. Had 80 live pinners in no time and headed to 45 ft of water to try for red grouper. The grouper bite was wide open. We picked up 3 red grouper that made the ride back with us with one going 24”. We also caught countless undersized reds to 19.75”. Must be noice for the commercial f&ck$ who only have an 18’ minimum size limit. And we released 2 nice 25” gags in fed waters on the same spot. This system is azz backwards right now…recreational guys release gags in federal while commercial quotas are raised to 430000 lbs of gags in federal waters for a 2011 gag grouper permit. I don’t get it!! Pizzes me off throwing back keeper gags after paying close to $200 for a trip to fill my dad’s boat up with gas and oil not counting ice and bait…oh yeah and truck gas from tally to st marks and back…almost doesn’t seem worth it…why do we have to release em!!! Anyways ill get off the soap box now….hit a few more spots in federal and only caught short reds. Went in to state and caught 2 keeper gags to 23”. All red grouper were caught in 45ft and gags in 25ft… on live pins. All in all we caught seven keeper grouper but only 5 made the ride back due to our flawed system and old computer modules spitting out flawed data that the noaa gulf fisheries council has made up. Don’t quite understand how saltwater does their population estimates and gathers their data but they can ride on our boat anytime and take lengths and weights cause there are just as many grouper in the gulf now as there was when I was in high school back in 2000….and the limits were 20” 5 grouper per person aggregate and no closed season on gags or reds!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Did get stopped by the man coming back into state waters and was glad I abide by the rules. Was not in possession of gags which was what he was hoping 4 im sure cause the end of the month is coming up lol gotta meet that quota. First time iv ever been stopped offshore. Better follow the rules guys…big brothers watchin….Have a safe weekend, holiday weekends really bring out the crazies!!!