It was a bit chilly heading out, but once we stopped it wasn't too bad. Got to the first spot at 8:10 and started marking fish all over the bottom. We sent a few LY's down and BAM!!......a nice 25" gag. It wasn't long before the red snapper got in on the action. We boated 6 nice snapper....of which 5 were keepers (except for the season being closed!). We caught numerous shorts and started running low on bait. So, I decided to go grunt fishing. I caught 4 using squid and turned them into cut bait to save on LY's. The snapper seemed to like them quite well. We continued catching snapper and even a few more keeper gags. We got broke off a few times and managed to pull a nice keeper out of the rocks after 10 minutes. We caught a few red grouper, but all were just barely short, so they went back
. We had planned to go to 3 different spots throughout the day, but the fish bit so well on #1 that we never left. We finally decided to head in around 1:30 and stopped at a favorite spot about 6 miles out from DI in 40 ft. that ALWAYS produces some nice rock bass. We sat on the spot for about 20 minutes and boated about 50....they were hitting everything we dropped to them.....I even dropped down an empty 3/8 oz. jighead for fun and they hit that too!!!! The two guys I took with me said it was the most amazing "fish bite" they had ever seen.
The ride back in was as smooth as it's been in a long time for me. We ran in about 35 the whole way and were back at the ramp at 2:30.
The weather was perfect from about 11:00 on.....the water was so smooth 22 miles out, that you could have taken a kayak. Water temp averaged about 60 and we fished from 40-70 ft. Baits used were frozen LY's, squid and cut-bait (grunts). Pinfish are starting to show up in the bay and they are being trapped around the docks. We didn't find any spanish yet, but I'm sure they'll show up shortly when the water warms a little more. FYI....Mike at Lanark just bought all the tackle from the IGA in Carrabelle and he's got alot of stuff for dirt cheap if you're interested...jig heads, SureKetch grubs, various SWA's, CT's, Eqalizers, etc....CHEAP.
Here's a few pics from the trip....
