BigBendFishing.Net

My Sister and her family came down to escape the Northern winter. You can blame the recent cold snap on them, I do. They come down every year and I take my bro-in-law and nephew out. We arrived at the marina at 0730 to find about 2"s of water under the lift. HHMMM We have five guys and I'll bet we can pull it out after it gets set down. So the operator puts it in and we pull it out of the mud. As we are loading up to go a boat passes by and he kicking up mud. I am thinking we'll be sitting a while waiting for water. 0800 everyone gets on the bow and we make our way out of the channel 1.5 was the shallowest we came to and that was around the fishing pier. As we rounded the corner we hit 5' and we headed out to the first spot to catch some bait. It was a chilly ride at 45*.

We stopped three times for bait and only could get five squirrel fish. Oh well it's better than nothing. We continued on out to 45' with a 3-4 following sea. It's a good thing because we would have turned around if it were the other direction. We are running about 20 knots so its about 30 minutes before we set anchor. The spot "looked" really good when we anchored and started fishing. Put the lines down, nothing. My dad throws on a livey and as soon as his bait hits the bottom his rod bends double. Cool, first keeper comes over the side 25" gag. My nephew hooks one on his rod and he pulls up a short. This is his first gag so he's pretty excited with the pull. Sure beats a Walleye. We continue this with the live bait. We had five squirrel fish and five people. Fair enough. I hook one on my brothers rod and mine flipped out of the net. No biggie, I'll just soak a northern mackerel. We caught one gag for every livey we had. One short in all. My brother caught a few on some AJ skins and my dad caught another4 on northern mackerel. I caught none. I guess I wasn't holding my mouth right. After all was said and done we caught 15 gags and 6 were keepers. Never caught a sea bass or a grunt. We trolled for a total of about 6.5 miles from once in 45' and again in 62' Never had a bite on the stretches. Total trip 65 miles burned 25 gallons of fuel with the new Suzie. We had five men on board that weighed between 180 and 250

It was a great day on the water it calmed down considerably for the trip in water temp was around 60 and sun never came out and it sprinkled a little. Excellent day on the water with family.

We did here of a boater that found a capsized boat off of Alligator Point. 35-40' long. They didn't see any survivors. They were trying to find out who the owners were.

WTG Chug

Sounds like a great trip
The boat is a 55 footer
Coast Guard members rescued with lost boaters off Panhandle
CARRABELLE, Fla. (AP) -- Two Coast Guard members had to be rescued with three lost boaters, two of them injured, when a 55-foot recreational vessel suddenly sank in the Gulf of Mexico.
Coast Guard officials in Panama City received a distress call from the boaters who said they were disoriented in rough seas and dispatched a boat by truck and trailer to this Florida Panhandle town late Monday.

The Coast Guard crew initially intended to escort the boaters ashore. But the rescuers instead decided to remove them after learning one boater had a broken hand and showed signs of diabetic shock while another had cuts and bruises from being tossed about in the rough weather.

A high-water alarm sounded after the rescuers boarded and the vessel sank before anyone could get back to the Coast Guard boat, which then recovered everyone from the water.

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The boaters were taken to George E. Weems Memorial Hospital where they were treated and released.

The Coast Guard identified them as David and Sharon Deleo, a couple from Duluth, Minn., who were wintering in Fort Myers, and a family friend, Eugene Walton, whose hometown was unknown. All were over 60, said Petty Officer 2nd Class Kyle Niemi, a Coast Guard spokesman in New Orleans.

The Coast Guard has marked the partially submerged boat and warned mariners it is a hazard to navigation.

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I guess if they were "lost" it wouldnt be worth getting there electronics. Was this the boat that sunk yesterday? It didnt seem that bad out there.

It went down on Tuesday

Good deal Chris, did you make it to 70'.

Good report, CB. Sounds like y'all had a good day.

chug good report!
sorry it took me so long to report i have been having major computer problems! it has been a real headache!
we were down the same weekend, sounds like our reports were about the same, we had six keepers all on dead bait, 4 were over 10 pounds so not a bad day since the weather was so bad. we had no luck trolling, and we had about 25 or 30 live baits and i didnt really have any luck with the live bait, caught 25-30 shorts. i will be gald when the wind calms down. about the job, i talked to my boss about it and she says things need to pick up before hire anybody! hope there is no hard feelings!
my dang offshore trip out of st. augstine got put off this past weekend and really made me mad, i was really looking forward to going to the gulf stream an catching some wahoo, 4-6 footers and 30kts wind was not a good idea!