unbelievable offshore fishing

[ertauber]

My fishing buddies and I usually fish inshore but yesterday with the calm seas we headed offshore. We ended up 19 miles out. Very dense fog but the GPS was perfect. We caught black sea bass everywhere with lots of keepers. While we were drifting in one area the guy on the bow decided to throw a stetch30. On his first cast he saw something huge follow it to the boat.Second cast the lure was grabbed and the fight was on. "Must be a shark" was our call. I have a picture but don't know how to post it but I will tell you it wasn't a shark. It was a 5' king mackeral. He saw another but it didn't hit. So we drifted on with cut bait on the bottom. The owner of this fine boat sings out " this isn't a bass" and sure enough it was a 19" red snapper. Shortly after releasing it his bait back on the bottom in 45' of water he gets another and then another. With the cooler full of great LEGAL fish we headed home. A day to remember!

[Dhawk]

great report.
been thinking of doing this...on a calm day.
what you catch the black sea bass on?
how big a boat did you go out on?

Thanks.

[Salty Gator]

Nice work. Always good when your cooler is full of legal fish.

[milto]

We also went offshore yesterday to take advantage of the calm seas. That fog was no joke! The fishing was on fire as well. The only thing that baffles me are the ARS restrictions. We caught over 80 red snapper and maybe 5 were not of a legal size if it were open season. We did manage to bring home 10 really nice mangrove snapper between all of those reds. George also played around with the sea donkeys for a while with a top water lure. It was really cool to watch them strike the top. Oh yea, also picked up two gags, both were short unfortunately. Either way, its hard to complain about a day that we constantly had a fish on and hanging with your buds.

[ertauber]

More info- My partner has a 22' Ranger. Fish were caught on cut mullet, cut squid all in 45 to 60 feet. King mac was stretch30 on grouper tackle.

[devodud]

Where were you fishing out of?

[ertauber]

We launched at Rock Landing