Our fishing trip got put together in a hurry with four other guys at Holiday Beach Resort. Terry and Mat from Kentucky were longtimers and charter almost every time they're here. Randy and his Dad from Nashville and Memphis were newbies like Aaron and I. I had planned to take him out on his first party boat but figured this would be a good op for him to go on a real fishing trip.
Got to the dock Wednesday at 0530, met the guys we hadn't met yet, Cpt. Steve and mate Billy. The "First Light" was a beautiful 40' diesel and we putted out to the end of the West jetties for bait. Six guys made it easy to jam the lw with 80-100 pins in no time. Here the cut was rough just like you expect joining the enourmous Choctaw Bay and the Gulf.
The trip out seemed a little long and Billy gave instructions after he finished making sure he had enough extra leaders - 80# Ande with circle hooks ready to go for backups. He had 8 rods ready with two backups and must have had what appeared to be 60-80 extra leader/hooks ready to go by the time he finished. It proved that there was always an opportunity to rerig frayed lines, cutoffs and a few breakoffs.
We finally made our first AJ stop. WHAM! WHAM! and the two biggest AJ's were on with Randy and his Dad. I had been told that the only reason AJ's exist is to pull your a** out of the boat. Those 2 as it turned out would be the only keepers of the day, even though everybody got several more that just didn't make the cut. It was hard to see Billy measure and remeasure only to have him toss them over. Oh well, let's get it on! Off we go further SW toward the magic numbers but turned around after Steve's ff lit up on the way. After giving spurts to the starboard and then the port deisel, Steve gave Billy the code, Billy said "down all the way and then crank twenty". Another AJ place! WHAM! WHAM! As soon as hookups occurred we, like a troupe of dancers at Billy's direction, would all move in tandem "ok guys let's all move right" or "left" depending on which guy(s) got the hookup.
Steve had a little code to let Billy know when was long enough in one spot - a little throttle spurt. So we move on.
At the next numbers, Billy said, "down all the way, crank 5". Alright, grouper time! Aaron hooked the first red snapper and it fought on the way up until it like got off or something. As it turned out, his snapper was the donation to the shark realm and he pulled up the head. Must have been a nice sized shark since the red was pretty good size too. Fortunately, that was the only intercept of the day! Aaron made up for the loss and so did everyone else until Steve gave the nudge on the starboard throttle again.
We did about 12-15 spots throughout the day. At another snapper frenzy, I thought I finally got a really good AJ but it didn't move around like the others that had been caught. Everybody else was bringing one snapper after another in and I was stuck with this dang fish that pulled real real hard and wasn't giving up worth s**t. As I hung over the transom with this whatever, I looked repeatedly at the line and was amazed that it didn't break. My left forearm had reached the, "man, this hurts like crap" stage several times. I got to the point that if I could get three turns on the Penn and rest I would be happy. Remember, it took forever to get an empty hook out of 200+ feet of water. Whatever else this fish was - he was stubborn. After probably 15 minutes (while everybody else was slamming the snapper) this big black blob of a fish came into sight.
As Billy gaffed it he was muttering something about "my God man"
HOW 'BOUT THIS 33" WARSAW!
Aaron and I had a good long day... 
The Cpt. said he had to search for 'em hard after all the recent winds... 60 miles out in 200+' 
Then back to splashing with the babes!
As it turned out we had a very good time. We missed Frances both in Destin and here at home. Mom got to do her junk store shopping. Aaron and I had some real good fishing and a great day out. The girls made new friends at the pool. Good times by all. Amen for vacations!
ps - I found a generator at HD that they hadn't expected to come in. The flat tire on the Durango didn't happen until today.
What more could one ask for?
