BigBendFishing.Net

Left Carrabelle Marina around 8:00 a.m. headed toward the east end of Dog Island. We stopped long enough behind the Island to pick up around 60 live pinfish, spot-tails, and blue runners.

We spent the day fishing holes from west of the K tower to just north of the O tower. Caught tons of short red and gag grouper and all the ruby lips you could want.

Ended the day with 11 keeper gags and red grouper and 1 "mango" snapper.

Highlight of the day occured just north of the O tower. We were about to head in and were trying to use up our live bait, so I put on a nice size spot tail and sent him down deep. Got a nice thump as the spot reached the bottom. Set the hook and was nearly pulled out of my shoes. I was able to keep pressure on him but couldn't make any turns with the reel. Finally, I got his head turned long enough to get a few wraps of line on the reel and started working him toward the surface. He made several good runs toward the bottom with me just holding on and letting the drag work. In the back of my mind I was thinking, this is going to suck if its a nurse shark. Finally, the fish broke the surface. 70lb. JEWFISH. What a rush! This is the 2nd jewfish I've caught on the north side of the O tower. Hopefully the 35mm photos turn out well and I'll try to scan them and post them later. Got a nice salute from the "Pressure Drop" as I held the fish up for them to see as they were easing by headed in.

Didn't catch a single keeper grouper on cut bait. If you're headed offshore, take the time to catch live bait. It really made the difference today. Can't wait til next time.

..Did you try a gold spoon...

Capt. Mike is building me some "custom offshore" versions of his weedless willow gold spoon.

That would be very interesting , a big weedless gold spoon.. hmm, keep me posted. By the way, great catch, sounds like a fine day on the water!

Great report, good catch.

bd, good deal! When I had a 35# Warsaw on I thought that it was more fish than I wanted to tangle with! It's hard to imagine what double that would be like - it's amazing you can even type about it

RodBow, my knees were knocking after the fight.

Good deal, Birddog. I can't believe you let that little ole fish whup ya.

In the olden days, I used to "catch" big, "volkswagon" jewfish one of two ways:

1) rope tied to bridge piling, meat hook, truck tube for shock cord. Several guys or a car to pull them in.

2) Speargun with a brain shot. Many were hit but only a few were brought in with this method.

In somewhat later years, I graduated to a 12 gauge shotgun shell powerhead. This made matters a bit easier but took all of the fun out of it.

EJ

Nah, Frank. Chalk's just pulling my chain a little. I've never liked throwing a gold spoon much until I spent everyday last week throwing a gold spoon and catching redfish.

Eddie Joe, Many years ago, my father-in-law had a hole just north of the O tower where you could catch really nice gags. But for every 3 good gags you caught you would lose a bottom rig to a big Jewfish. So he told an"old" navy diver buddy of his about it and gave him the numbers for the hole. A week later his buddy brought him some fillets off of a 400 lb. jewfish. On that same hole about 4 years ago, me and 2 other guys took turns landing a 150 lb. jewfish.

Finally got around to scanning the old photo of our jewfish.

Nice fish for sure. I'd like to try boating one of them things..

There's plenty of them around the O-tower. I even saw 1 in 3' of water at Keaton Beach nestled up to a old channel marker. He appeared to be 4' long.