We departed Carrabelle and went south from East Pass. The water temperature was a balmy 83 degrees, which made me think that the big fish would still be deep. (Does anyone know whether water temperatures or the calendar provide a greater influence on fish behavior? Please share your thoughts.) We were going to one of my best spots north of S Tower. On the way out, we passed small patches sargasso weed and after reaching the 80 foot depths, we started running across many large schools of small flying fish. Maybe the sargasso and flying fish mean that mahi-mahi are still in the area.
At my red snapper hole, of course, we caught red grouper and more red grouper. (I’m not sure how anyone at NOAA could decide that red grouper are being overfished.) Eventually, we put a 10.5 lb., 28” red snapper in the cooler along with a few lane snapper.
The pictures from the underwater camera showed that my snapper hole was holding a lot of snapper. Our success rate, however, showed that the snapper weren’t really hungry or that they couldn’t beat the red grouper to our baits.
Here are some underwater pictures from the deep area:
We put a 25” gag grouper in the cooler after moving around a bit. Then we fished our way back in where we added another gag grouper and a 14.5 lb. 31” red snapper to our haul.
Here are some underwater pictures from the trip in:
For baits, we used frozen LYs and a variety of live baits--sandperch, pinfish, spot tail pinfish, and tomtates. The red snapper were caught on the LYs which were secured to the hook with a little squid.
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