My second weekend fall snapper plan was to fish the world renowned Keaton inshore family of BreamBuster and the Mighty Calvinator along with their regular fishing buddy Dr. Dave B. also know as ddb on the Big Bend forum! Having only the 3 on board with Celeste back up in Louisville, I thought I’d offer the 4th corner of the Crab to friend Brad “FamilyFisher” since his boat was in the shop and I know he was Jonesing a trip. But Brad being the husband he is turned down the trip to spend the day with his special bride Lora, so I quickly filled the spot with my local Fire fighter buddy Tommy.
Early Friday Brad messages me that he can go if I didn’t fill the spot, but I told him NO you blew it Tommy grabbed it!! However, @ 4PM Friday I get a message Tommy is being made to work the Luke Bryan concert in Valdosta Saturday and there is no way he can get out of it. So spot back open I offered it back to Brad and he didn’t hesitate! Tommy would drive down after the concert early Sunday and fall onto the boat as she left the dock Sunday to get in his corner for at least one day
. SOOOO crews are arranged! Brad being on a long weekend and already in Carrabelle took care of Ice bait and necessities, Carson at the Lanark Market dropped a pinfish trap in for me and we were there at 6AM to fuel up Saturday morning. Picked up Brad, Got dropped in the river and out we went. Having the best two pinfish catchers I know aboard I put them to work to get a few dozen more pins for our ride to the deep! It took a little work as I don’t think the pinfish were awake yet, but we managed a few dozen and headed out to find the elusive snaps!
Sunrise on pin hole
Seems like an awful lot of anglers heading out of the river Saturday, I guess all these boats just don’t bother with reports or don’t read the fishing forums, I don’t know, but based on what I saw trailer wise Saturday and Sunday at the City ramp there were an awful lot of people chasing snapper this weekend.
So get to the dang report JOE!! We were debating on going out 40+ miles and after some discussion with crew knowing we'd be at it for 2 days we changed gears and decided to work our way out to 100 and hit some places I had plotted out for the trip. First Stop was a hole Peng, Calvin and I had found on a previous trip that we had real good luck with Lane snapper and sure enough hit a few nice ones and then ran out to 90.
Started kinda slow drifting a previously productive red snapper hole, but just couldn't get them going I finally had enough of my lack luster crews efforts
and threw down the Spro jig with twin curly tail grub and managed a 26 inch snapper to start the red color pattern off I think we had one other just legal snapper in the box on bait and a few sea bass and lanes at that point. We spent some time drifting, but just couldn't' get thing working as well as I wanted and had a spot I've been wanting to hit for years kind of nagging me in the back of my mind so just called it for that spot and went on out to @ 100 ft.I found a great show or two and plotted a drift for anchoring got right on the marker, but our anchor was dragging and the poor ole man of the group was on anchor duty and pulled it back up for us to try for attempt two. This time we hooked and landed right on the show, got started right away with those pins the boys worked hard at and left the frozen stuff in the cooler. Well all I'll say is I've never seen a mangrove bite like that before in my life it was hot hot hot and everyone got in on the action except me
guess the fish gods decided "ok you showed the boys up by slapping a red snapper on the jig, were going to let them have some fun now" so I just kind of watched and helped net fish and de hook for Calvin and filled the fish box with mangrove after mangrove!Then the quite guy Dave actually I think groaned a little...rod doubled over, :fishing everyone's focus shifted to Dave and his ole half spooled red 4/0 Penn and the old boat rod straining at the weight of a good fish...up up up and color showing, then DANG Peng the foul mouthed one says and quickly places the net under a behemoth mango, aka grey, aka black snapper and it hits the deck with a thud! We were all a little in shock at the size of this fish as the state record is only 17 lbs this looked upwards of 10/11 easy so it was a NICE fish!
Fishing slowed, but we were quite happy and pinfish faded from the once full live well, so we decided to try and find a different species of red hued fish this one being of the Grouper variety! Needless to say our 90 red grouper number was a dud and we ended up moving again laterally this time to a spot I have not fished, but have wanted to also for some time now and things picked back up there, and the seas started calming, with the Live bait gone Squid became the bait of choice and we actually managed another mangrove or two from this spot. Peng hooked into a beast of a shark and actually put the belt on for the first time I've ever seen and we shot a little video ill try and get up later.
Time was getting on quicker than this report so we decided to call it a day and boy what a day it was ran in on calm seas at 33 mph with smiles and sleepy heads filling the seats. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYn3gLXI ... e=youtu.be[/video]
My final tally based on picture evidence
and Calvin running around with the scale all afternoon LOL
was:
14 mangroves up to 9.6 lbs
6 ARS to 11.4 lbs
12 lane snapper
3 scamp (yummy)
2 nice gags
A few sea bass
A few grunts & Vermillion and a 4lb, 14 oz Spanish Mack.
Day two and more picture to follow...
