I jumped at the chance to get on the water without the pressure of a charter and a forecast of sunny & 2ft or less. My girlfriend Amy and I invited a couple of friends along for a beautiful day of fishing. Randy (Knot Yet) and his girlfriend Libby and another friend, Ron Rice & his daughter Sally left the dock around 7:30 -8:00 and stopped at D.I. Reef to see if we could put some live bait on board but the water temp of 64 prevented the pinfish from being there yet. Next, we stopped at the marker that sets about a mile or so off the reef and loaded up a few spottails ( sailors choice) baits and decided frozen bait would have to do.
We started trolling stretch 30's when we hit 45ft, looking for some new bottom. We didn't go to far and had a double hook up, both gags went into the box and marked a nice rock. After hooking up with a few more trolling, decided to bottom fish the area. Amy pulled a nice one off the bottom that went 28"

and we had a slow but steady bite for awhile.
The bite quit so I decided to check out the Bryson Reef, I hadn't been there in awhile. With 2 boats there, decided to troll around and immediately had another double hook up, but both were shorts, barely. After hooking several more shorts, I found a spot just off the big wreck and set out the chum churn and dropped a couple live ones down. After five minutes, Randy was doing battle with a keeper AJ.

Once aboard it measured 34", about 20-22 lbs, his first keeper AJ. A few minutes later, with a cut LY down Randy hooked what we thought was a nice grouper, but to our surprise, it was a 26" redfish

No sooner had we put it on ice, Ron brought another on in the boat and then Libby put one in the box. All three redfish were identical, 26 " and beautiful. About then, the boat nearest us couldn't take it and 2 of them donned there gear and it was diver down. Of course, the bite shut down and we moved on. We spent the afternoon checking out some new area, but the grouper seemed to have got the lock jaw for the afternoon. We decided to head in and enjoy a few cold ones on the ride back. What a great day.
The final tally was 7 keeper groper, 1 AJ, 3 redfish and few big seabass and grunts to make for a nice mess of fish. Water temp was 64-67 and clear. The seas were 1 ft or less all day. The company couldn't have better and Cuda "B" ran great. Oh yea, we used gordon , black& silver, and black& gold strech 30's and the bait was mainly cut LY's
Capt. Jay