Took my 196 Bay Reef over to MB this past week with a couple of friends to try out the Kingfish trolling and some bottom fishing. NOAA missed the boat big time as we had to keep it around 16 knts to get out to the deeper reefs/wrecks without knocking our teeth out, once we got out there it got pretty calm. Ended up doing some bottom fishing in about 100' approx 20 miles out. First time that far out or that deep but had a buddy boat and plenty of safety gear including a SPOT which I used to send the wives a "We're OK"message several times during the day as well as a PLB. The trip out was rough due to some larger swells, our buddy boat was a 24' CC and he couldn't run much faster than I could. We got on some serious AJs and I now know why they are called reef donkeys! We limited out on AJs and kings the first full day. The second day the AJ bite was slower and we eventually caught our limit using top water plugs, we would pop them and get three or four fish chasing them and then hook up. We broke off a lot on the topwater using 80# fluoro and even wire. We finally caught our limit by making sure we were clear of the reef and backing off the drag and letting them run a little, last one came when my buddy got aggravated with them chasing right up to the boat and ran the plug in a figure 8 right at the boat, the AJ nailed it with about 3' of line out and when I gaffed him the plug fell out of his mouth with one of the trebles bent almost straight. I also hooked up on a smoker king, he pulled about 300 yards on me in about a minute and tail danced 3 - 4 times and then came unbuttoned. My buddy who has fished the area a lot said it was the biggest king he had ever seen over there. We got checked by the FWC out about 20 miles, 3 officers on board, they dropped one off on my boat, one on my buddies boat and one stayed with their boat. Very quick and professional. The officer on our boat checked our coolers for fish and pointed out that there wasn't much need to measure the AJs as we had two in the 120 qt cooler with tails sticking out of both sides
I got the impression they were looking for grouper/snapper as they didn't check licenses or safety equipment just the coolers. Also got checked at the city ramp, officer came driving in as we pulled into the ramp and got out with his rule stick, climbed up in the boat while we had it on the trailer and opened up the live well which I used as a fish box given that the AJs didn't fit in the cooler. He opened the lid and climbed back out of the boat after he saw our AJs. I have to say the Mexico Beach Artifical Reef Association is a top quality group. They have a detailed list of all of their reefs on the net and publish tons of info. Everything we fished was a public number. Gave the Garmin 740s a good workout looking at all the structure and got some precision boat handling in trying to troll right over the reefs while taking water over the bow as we wallowed around in the closein swells! Also tried out the Spotlock on my MK trolling motor and it held us right on the wreck even in pretty good waves/current, for some reason the Talon didn't seem to help all that much in 100' of water
Picture is a litle small due to being taken on a cell from the other boat but this was my first AJ hookup in a 100'. I changed over to a heavier rod I picked up Crums on the way over since the one in the picture almost doubled over with the AJ. Caught the AJs on he bottom with live pin fish, on the top with Rapala plugs and the kings and spanish on dusters and cigar minnows. Also picked up a couple of dolphin trolling around some matted weed.
