Like a Bucket of Water to the Face While Fishing for Red Snapper and Red Grouper on July 31, 2025
Posted: August 1st, 2025, 3:30 pm
Lucky me. I have friends who wanted fish for red snapper out of Carrabelle yesterday. It was windy and rough, but it was also the last day to keep red snapper until September. As we slowly headed south from East Pass into a quartering head sea, the boat would knock a wave up and the wind would blow it into my face. On and on this went. The boat ride was like a bucket of water to the face every other minute.
Eventually, we (especially I) had enough of the boat ride and we started to fish within sight of S Tower. Immediately after dropping a bait down, a guy on the right side of the boat had a big snapper on his line. Then I felt a powerful tug on mine. I fought the fish for about 10 seconds, and it was gone. I checked my line for bait. There was no bait. There was no leader. It broke or came loose from my three-way swivel. Man, I wish I knew what kind of that fish was.
Twenty minutes later, I hooked into another big fish, big enough to pull out some drag. It turned out to be one of our big snapper, which were 31” and 32” long. As I started removing my hook, I saw that it had a second hook and leader coming from its mouth. Now, one of the other guys on the boat is going to claim the fish or an assist for bringing it up, I thought. As I worked on removing the hooks, I realized they were both mine. I could tell from the Snell knots attaching the hooks to the leaders. I hooked the same snapper twice.
With the rough seas, I didn’t bring the underwater camera. So there are no underwater pictures from this trip.
We used a variety of baits: live cigar minnows, frozen LYs, and bonito strips. The fish seemed to prefer bonito strips on Thursday.
With a quartering following sea to a beam sea, the boat ride back to Carrabelle was much faster than the way out, but it was still wet.
Here’s what made it to the fillet table:
By the way, somebody at work did this to a fillet of one of the snapper above:
Looks delicious to me.
Eventually, we (especially I) had enough of the boat ride and we started to fish within sight of S Tower. Immediately after dropping a bait down, a guy on the right side of the boat had a big snapper on his line. Then I felt a powerful tug on mine. I fought the fish for about 10 seconds, and it was gone. I checked my line for bait. There was no bait. There was no leader. It broke or came loose from my three-way swivel. Man, I wish I knew what kind of that fish was.
Twenty minutes later, I hooked into another big fish, big enough to pull out some drag. It turned out to be one of our big snapper, which were 31” and 32” long. As I started removing my hook, I saw that it had a second hook and leader coming from its mouth. Now, one of the other guys on the boat is going to claim the fish or an assist for bringing it up, I thought. As I worked on removing the hooks, I realized they were both mine. I could tell from the Snell knots attaching the hooks to the leaders. I hooked the same snapper twice.
With the rough seas, I didn’t bring the underwater camera. So there are no underwater pictures from this trip.
We used a variety of baits: live cigar minnows, frozen LYs, and bonito strips. The fish seemed to prefer bonito strips on Thursday.
With a quartering following sea to a beam sea, the boat ride back to Carrabelle was much faster than the way out, but it was still wet.
Here’s what made it to the fillet table:
By the way, somebody at work did this to a fillet of one of the snapper above:
Looks delicious to me.
Very nice mess of fish.