Left from Mashes Sands looking to run out south and find red snapper, never been down that way. Ran to the shoal near Buoy 26 to try and catch pinfish but only found 1.
Ran over to the 26 marker and caught pilchards and cigar minnows. About halfway from 26 to the OAR/Wakulla DZ #1 coords we started losing RPMs and could only maintain about 18kts. Seems like fuel delivery issues. So we dropped down speed and put out trolling lines waiting to see what that weather system with all the water spouts was going to do, and if the engine was going to continue to act up.We marked some really nice fish shows in about 50ft so put the spot lock on and started dropping down combinations of dead baits... squid, sardine chunks, whole sardines... nothing. Couldn't buy even a nibble. Seemed really odd. Dropped down some sabikis with squid to see if it was all just big bait schools, but couldn't get a bite there either? We were freelining the live pilchards and cigars out the back and never had them in the water more than about 60s before hooking up with amberjack. Got cutt off a number of times by big hits on those also that I assume were kings.
Really perplexed why we didn't get any attention whatsoever on those big fish clouds, especially with amberjack hanging on top them. Anyone have any ideas? Is 50ft too shallow for red snapper right now? I would have thought it would be covered up. Normally I would have jumped in and dove down to see what I could shoot but with the engine being finicky the wife wanted me to stay in the boat.
Started losing more RPMs so decided to head back to shore, ended up having to limp all the way back at 8-10kts. Looks like I'll be stuck tracing the fuel system and filters this week.