Due to the recent tropical weather, the water in 40-60’ where we usually find bait was as dark as coffee. The bait fish weren’t where they were supposed to be. Instead of pinfish, pigfish, and cigar minnows. We caught mostly seabass and a couple hardhead catfish.
Moving around, we saw evidence of a fish school on the sonar and fished for bait again. Turned out, we were on top of a bunch of gag grouper that would hit tiny bits of squid on size 6 hooks. We pulled a few juvenile grouper to the boat, but the bigger ones broke our bait rigs. Eventually, we stumbled upon a spot that held a mix of bait fish, tomtates, pinfish, pigfish, sandperch, and small lizardfish. We caught what seemed to be just barely enough bait for an offshore trip and headed further offshore.
As we neared AJHANGON, large fish arches appeared stacked on top of each other on the sonar. Amberjack were everywhere. In the past, the spot produced a 47 lb. amberjack that made my fishing buddy beg me to take him to smaller fish. I still laugh at his pain.
Underwater pictures verified that tall stacks of fish arches mean amberjacks are down below.
On Friday, however, most of the amberjack we caught were only about 30” long, but it seemed like each of us caught four to six of them. None of the fish were quite big enough to bring home. Nearly every bait dropped down—live, dead, or artificial—brought a fish up to the boat. Some of these were red grouper, both big and small, and gag grouper, red snapper, and mangrove snapper. The big fish of the day caught at AJHANGON and it was a 32” red snapper that weighed 16 pounds.
Here’s a photography tip. When you pose for a photo with a 30” amberjack, push it away from your body and closer to the camera. Magically, your fish grows to about 40”. The alternative is to catch bigger fish.
We spent the rest of the day in less than 100’ as we moved from spot to try to catch our limit of red snapper. Unfortunately, most of the time, we were catching, venting, and releasing red grouper.
Underwater photos showed lots of grouper in the spots we fished along with lookdowns, also known as moonfish.
Had I not advised one of the guys to toss back two smaller but legal-sized red snapper, we would have had seven red snapper among four fisherman. For the record, I did not make anyone throw a legal fish back. I just suggested it might be embarrassing to keep the smaller ones.
Overall, we had a good day on the water. We caught a ton of fish and had enough legal fish in the cooler for everyone to eat well for a while.
I’m hoping to get out on the boat again next Friday, but at the moment, it appears that more tropical weather is on the way. If you are looking for a secure place to store your boat during the storm, you may want to ask Martin Marine near the Carrabelle airport about short-term storm storage. (FYI storm storage, like everything else about boating, is not cheap but likely not much more than towing your boat to Georgia and back.)
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