First thing Saturday we ran to a spot out to the southwest, put out the chum blocks and flat lines and started hoping for a king. We caught a couple of grouper on the bottom, and my dad caught a red snapper, but not the first king showed up. I did, however, catch the biggest remora I've ever seen on a flat lined cigar minnow. We picked up and hit a few more spots, but no kings.
We decided to head out to O-tower to catch some live bait, and since it was only a few miles away at that point we decided to troll over to it. We had a couple of strikes that spit the hooks on the way, nothing really exciting though. Right as we got to the tower, though, I picked up a big red snapper on a spoon we had trolling out the back. (I didn't know that snapper would come off the bottom to hit a spoon on the surface.) Unfortunately, the barracuda tore him apart before we could get him to the boat. It was fun to watch the feeding frenzy though.
All of the bait at the tower was too small to use, so we headed on over to the Yamaha to try for an AJ or king on dead bait anyway. The month before I had caught a big king out there on a dead cigar minnow on the bottom, so it was worth a try. No luck out there either, so we decided to head back in.
Keepers for the day:
2 grouper to 25"
1 snapper
2 grunts
Sunday morning we headed out again, and stopped off at the One More Time to try our hand and kings again. There was another boat anchored up on it already, so we anchored nearby and put out the chum blocks and flat lines again. Again, no kings. We did have a blast with some spanish on light tackle, though. And we got to watch the guys in the other boat pull in a *huge* king.
After a little while of that, though, we decided to focus on grouper the rest of the day. We picked up and started hitting spots in progressively deeper water, heading out a bit farther with each one. Eventually we were past the Yamaha without a grouper in the box.
Around noon we showed up at what was to be our last stop of the day, in about 70' of water, and the bite was on from the first bait down until the tide stopped. We caught short grouper after short grouper, with occasional keeper. Sometimes the bait wouldn't even hit the bottom. At one point my dad's rod doubled over and he had a grouper on that he couldn't turn. It managed to get him down in the rocks, but we put the rod in the rod holder and gave it some slack. Every 10-20 minutes we'd reel in the slack and give it a good hard tug. (He kept fishing with another rod in the meantime.) After about an hour and a half the fish decided to poke his head back out of the hole, and this time my dad was ready. After another round of tug-o-war we had another grouper in the box, 27" at that.
At one point Don's rod bent double, which was scary since no grouper had done that to him yet. (It was a heavy-duty rod.) Turned out to be a nurse shark, which worked Don over pretty well.
Around 3pm the bite died, and we decided to head back in. We probably caught 7-10 grouper for every one we kept, and we were worn out. Luckily, the seas had slicked off and we were able to run back in at wide open.
Keepers for the day:
10 grouper to 27"
5 spanish
8 grunts (that weren't used for bait)
Even though Saturday was a bit slow, Sunday afternoon made up for it. We had a great time.
Here are the pictures:
Dad's snapper:
Saturday's catch:
Don's nurse shark:
Sunday's catch, minus the grunts:
