. Decided to let her pass and played the waiting game wasting and hour. On the way out our 2 year old furuno bottom machine decided to go out 
. Man o man, first the storms and now the bottom machine, WTF! Guess we will have to do like the 1960s b4 they had bottom finders. Checked the radar on the iphone and it still wasnt looking great offshore. Made it to the shallow grass beds and put some pins and really nice pigs in the livewell quickly and opted to run to some shallower stuff and let the way offshore storms break up. The run out wasnt bad but had enough 1-2 ft chopp to not allow us to run faster than 20 mph. Got to our first spot in 30ish ft and zerod in on the spot and hoped we got over the right spot seeing as we were shootin in the dark. We did hit something in the dark seeing that my dad put a healthy 22" Red grouper in the boat on his first drop 
. We caught a few more shorts and then they quit. By this time it was 1230 and the some BIG storms from the west were creeping NE so we decided to go south as to stay out of there way. Got south of them and my dad said well, the heck with it, lets go to the deep honey hole you killed them on 3 weeks ago. Didnt have to convince me twice so we layed the throttle down and made it to 65ft...37 miles from the lighthouse...to the good hole. Now keep in mind no depth finder so we just got in the area of the spot and decided to drift. We knew we didnt have much time cause it was already 2 pm and we had a long 1.5 hr run back in. We drifted a few time with no avail and finally drifted over that magical patch of live bottom and bam bam bam 
triple hook up. Marcus (bro in law) pulls in his first keeper grouper, 22" Red, I get a nice 23" Red Snapper and Dad gets an 18" snapper. We fished another 20 mins but couldnt get right back over that piece of bottom so we didnt get anything else. Wish the depth finder was workin...makes a world of difference. Anyways made the long haul back in and hit the dock by 430. We felt victorious seeing that we had no bottom machine and had to deal with 2 ft chop all day not to mention rain and thunder boomers every dircetion to avoid and still caught fish. We all had a blast and cant wait to do it again. Guess we wont be heading out again till aj season opens and will def be sitting on go fort sept 15! -Tight Lines 
The days catch!
Marcus' first keeper Grouper!
