With no goal other than to just get out, Sanford Boye, Jay Peacock, and I left the Cedar Key dock at sunrise and headed out to 26 feet to catch bait. On the way out we threw jigs for cobia on markers # 3 & 1 but no takers (#1 is no longer a steel pole, it’s now a green can). With around forty pinfish, pigfish, small white grunts, spottail pins, and blue runners in the live well we headed offshore in calm seas. After a couple of stops looking at numbers we stopped in 78 feet and began fishing. The first couple of gag to hit the fishbox went 14 and 13 lbs and both were caught on live bait. Dead bait didn’t fare well as the small fish pecked away at it and the grouper seemed not to be interested in it. Sanford boxed a nice red porgy right before Jay hooked into a nice fish. Jay had his hands full, both with the fish in the water and on the deck. We had the transom gate down and his 13 lb grouper was on the floor flipping all over with Jay displaying some interesting wrasslin’ moves on the grouper trying to keep it from going back out the transom. That made for some good entertainment and was the subject for some good teasing.

14 lb gag

Me with a nice 14 lber (from Jay’s camera)
Outstanding conditions!!

Sanford’s red porgy.

Jay with his 13+ lb gag (his largest in the Gulf)
Overall, the bite was a slow one and after 5 gag in the fishbox and a couple of 23â€