Seas forcast was 2 foot and this time they got it right !The breeze was great.
We got out to 31 feet and started trolling .We caught a legal gag and a couple of throwbacks . We trolled for about 30 min and decided to go to our favorite spots withing 22 miles of ecofina.
All we had was ly's and squid for bait and we put down a combination of both. Soon fish were on the bottom all chumed up with the squid .This was about 1030 am. We caught 13 legal grouper gags and reds in about 1 hour and lost some large fish.
We threw back at least 15 undersized fish. Then as quickly as it started the bite was over. We waited a few more hours and ran out of bait. Started cutting up grunts and caught 4 more legal grouper for a total of 17 . We were thrilled and so were our friends. Not a bad first trip!
The next day went out by ourselves in high hopes of a repeat, but as luck would have it , this didn't happen .Sharks and sucker fish had invaded the reef and boy did they take over. Saw one 12 ft bull shark and caught a 8 foot leapard and too many "shoe fish" So much for cooling off in the water
We did finally catch a nice cobia and 2 grouper, one nice red and gag. So we still weren"t skunked. As we pulled into Palm Coast at 10 pm last night we knew that this was " worth the trip" again to return to the panhandle for wonderful fishing.
One thig we found Sunday was the water was cloudier and had brown trash in the water and when we bottom fished it would be all over our bait and weights. Is this some type of see weed. Anyone else find this to be true? We were bottom fishing in 37- 38 foot water.
We have been lucky to find so may nice grouper in this depth but will problably have to go out farther next trip.
