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Hit the water at 8am and caught a few hundred pilchards for bait. Headed out 12 miles and locked on a spot. Started chumming with live baits and soon had the predators all around us. Flatlining produced AJs, Bonita’s, Kings, and even a Mangrove Snapper. We had a 9-10 foot shark and what looked like a small 7-8’ tiger shark hanging around us. After catching 5 or 6 AJs in the 40” range we were done. We then bottom fished for Vermillion and caught 5 for supper.




Kids were done as we had stayed up late the night before cast netting pinfish at the canal.




Sunday was a quick morning trip. I had to make the boys get out of bed at 7:30. Both boys were acting like they would rather sleep in, but I knew they would regret that. We limited ourselves to the Car Body area for time. I caught a bunch of pilchards again and headed out 6 miles. Dropping the pilchards to the bottom produced some Vermillion and legal sized red snapper. After about 30 minutes we pull up a couple 18-20” Mangroves. A few minutes later I have a big hit on a 2.5” pilchard and bring a 27” gag over the rails. Also caught a 17” gag a few minutes later.

Then a school of peanut dolphin show up. Both boys have these on their bucket list. Our pilchards are the perfect size for them and we keep them chummed up near the boat. We landed 10 of them and then they shut off. They hung around the boat for a while but would not take a live bait with a hook in it. Hindsight says I should have switched to cut bonita and buried the hook better, but my mind was only on our live bait. Caught a few more legal size snapper then headed to the hill at noon with a grouper, mangroves, dolphin and Vermillion in the box. Also threw back 8 legal size snapper 16-19”.

Great report bbb, those big bonitos really make that drag scream. Good job on the meat also, tasty box of fish.

nice!

12 miles = what water depth?

Nice! I got into the peanut dolphin over there once on some grass patches, they were slamming little 1/4 oz Spro jigs pitched to the floating grass patches just as fast as we could unhook and toss them.

Srbenda wrote:nice!

12 miles = what water depth?

Around 75ft

6 miles had us at 58ft

Salty Gator wrote:Great report bbb, those big bonitos really make that drag scream. Good job on the meat also, tasty box of fish.

Thanks.

Kids enjoyed catching the bonita’s as much as anything else Saturday. Great fight and manageable,so they could get them in the boat quicker than the AJs.

My son’s friend asked me Saturday morning what we were going to catch. I told him “ A bunch of stuff we probably can’t keep”. He said “What’s fun about that?” Now he knows.

The best part to me is live chumming and having the fish 10-15 feet off your motor. Toss in a dozen pilchards and the water just blows up.