State Water Groupers, Kings and Scallops

[kom06]

I've been on the forum a while but rarely post. 4 friends and I decided to have a day on the water Saturday. We loaded the 19 ft bay boat down with 11 rods, 2 coolers and all of our scalloping gear and headed to Lanark. We must have been a sight to see at the ramp and cruising around with all that gear and people. Decided to start off fishing in the morning and try scalloping later on in the day. We had no problem catching 40-50 pinfish and headed to a spot in about 29' where the coastline was easily visible. We anchored up around 9 am and the bite was immediately on. A bunch of short grouper on pinfish. We ended up with two keeper gags, one 23 and one 25. We got distracted from the grouper after an hour of fishing when the kingfish showed up. We spent about two hours catching kingfish one by one on pinfish flat lined about 10ft behind the boat. We landed and kept 6 in the 15-25 lbs range and lost 3 or 4. We could have easily caught as many as we wanted. We had completely forgot about scalloping until 11 o'clock when the wind died and the grouper and king bite died completely. We headed back in and join hundreds of our best friends snorkeling for the elusive scallop. We ended up with about 2 gallons east of the ramp. Ended up being a great day with great friends. Sorry no pictures....

[Nambleman]

No pictures! What! How do I know that this even happened?! Sounds like a good story to me

[tallykenj]

Wow. Great trip.

[lmmoore]

Great Report I heard that the kings were thick off Mexico Beach the last few days as well.