Bouy 24 and Beyond!
Posted: May 8th, 2008, 4:59 pm
Hey now! I know I'm suppose to be a shallow water angler, so what am I doing offshore? Well, let me explain myself. My son, Bobby, has this friend, Lt. Louie, who owns a 23' Mako, and he invited Gene (my ever present shallow water angler partner) and I to go fishing with them yesterday. Okay. 
After a good early morning breakfast, Gene and I rode on over to Mashy Sand's Gulf station to meet up with Bobby and Louie. $150.00 worth of gas later, lots of ice, drinks, eats, etc., no live bait though, we put in at about 9 a.m. and ran smack dab into 4-6-foot seas being pushed by winds out of the east. 
The tide would be a 1.2 low @ 9:46 a.m. and 3.3 high @ 3:14 p.m., with the feed times best between 2:31-4:31 p.m. Sunny, few clouds, air temp in the 70's -high 80's with the sea water temp in the high 70's. The wind was "predicted" to be SW @ 10-15 knots, producing 2-3 foot seas. I don't think so! 
We stopped at the Bird Roast outside the Ocklock river channel and tried to Sabiski up some live bait - no body home. Bad luck!
When we reached the Shoals, Louie, graciously, slowed the boat to trolling speed (about 4 MPH) and we put out four flat lines (Duster, Stretch 25, spoon, & a Christmas rig) for mack attacks. First strike produced a fat, blue runner on the X-mas rig - it went into the live bait well and became exceedingly bored until we managed to get to the grouper grounds, way out there off Bouy 24, about 2 hours later. About five minutes later the Silver Strtetch went off and a nice 10# King Mack came on board. That one was followed by four more, all on the Silver Stretch. Then, complete boredom for an hour until we reeled in the lines and pounded our way to some 40-foot water away from Bouy 24 (don't ask me where we were, I couldn't tell you even if I wanted to). 
Louie started our drift over some "broken" bottom and we immediately started catching grouper and grunts on squid and cigar minnows using "knocker" rigs, bounced along the bottom. Unfortunately, most of the Black (not Red) grouper were 16-21" long, too short for the legal size limits, so back they went. The Key West grunts and occasional Hog Snapper were huge - we put about a dozen of them on ice during the day, and used some smaller ones for "cut bait".
Then, I hooked a 24" Black grouper that tired my arms out and Bobby put a 26" Red Grouper on ice right behind me. 
As we continued to motor back and redrift the same 300 yard areas, a huge cobia smashed the live blue runner on top, tangled the line around the prop, and broke off. 
All during the drifting process we had been running a "chum" slick using ground up oily fish parts and some new stuff I found at Boater's World called Shrimp CHUMBO - a great mix, try it sometime. Obviously, the cobia was lured into the "slick" where the blue runner waited for it's demise. About 4:30 p.m. we called it quits as the wind had settled to a SW direction and tempered the wave action down to a 3-4 foot rolling - much more acceptable, I think.
As we neared the Shoals again, out went the four flat lines again and within a few minutes a huge king slammed the big silver Drone Spoon, ran out 100 yards of line several times, and broke off at the boat right as the gaft was coming at him - darn, darn! 
I must say, not too bad a day for an old fat, shore line Capt., his old friend, and a couple of "young guns".
That 23' Mako is a sweet boat, and a good thing we had a big bow boat what with all that nasty wave action most of the day. I'll do another trip sometime, but not too soon. I'm in pain today, especially after helping Bobby clean up all the fish! Nice pain, though. 
I hope you can get off shore and pump up some of those tasty grouper...the fillets were mucho' delic last night.