We spot-locked above the school and dropped our Sabiki rigs. The widest variety of bait that I had ever seen from one spot came up on our hooks—cigar minnows, pinfish, sand perch, threadfin herring, Atlantic bumpers, and more.
With plenty of bait in the baitwell, we headed south with storms and black skies blocking our way back to the boat ramp. Along the way to our first spot, patches of schools of small glass minnows appeared here and there with predators attacking them from below.
The red grouper seemed to be filled with these minnows, too. Look at this red grouper trying to spit-up a belly full of half-digested minnows onto my clean boat:
As usual, we found more than a few small red grouper and some bigger ones. These fish were caught on live baits, frozen LYs, and slow pitch jigs. The small red snapper on the fillet table took a cigar minnow that slowly drifted down on a half-ounce knocker rig. The big 34” red snapper hit a 100g Johnny’s Jigs all glow torpedo slow pitch jig with wire core assist hooks. Likewise, red grouper hit everything. Two of the greedy grouper went after the same jig. Remember, unless you really want to get “hooked” on fishing, don’t use a jig as a fish gripper.
Here are pictures of the bottom at some of our fishing spots:
After fishing for a while, the storms chased us southeast to where one of us landed a 32” gag grouper that was vented and released. The big gag hit an orange 200g Ocean Devil bouncing souls jig. Nothing else noteworthy was caught at that location.
Pictures from the bottom suggested that the bite at the gag grouper spot was slow due to the abundance of sharks.
To see the video of the bluff charges these sharks made at my camera (starting at 1 minute and 9 seconds into the video), click on the link to my Instagram here:
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DLkzolV ... g4M3NwN241
By the time the storms cleared, it was time to head home. As we passed through East Pass, an FWC boat appeared behind us with its lights flashing. The FWC officers wanted to inspect our catch. While inspecting our fish, an officer exclaimed, “This is best haul of fish that we have seen all day. . . . No need to measure these. They are all big.”
Here’s our catch for the day:
By the way, I recently discovered Victory Knives from New Zealand. They look like ordinary commercial quality knives. However, they have a different feel, firm yet flexible, when cutting fish. This is probably because the steel used by Victory Knives goes through a more complicated tempering and quenching process than the steel used by other knife brands. Check out https://victoryknivesusa.com/, if you don’t have too many fillet knives already.
