Well red snapper is finally open but alas the morons in charge decided that us recreational fishermen couldnt have too much fun so they shut down amberjack and gag grouper. 
Anyhow with a forecast of 1ft seas I jumped when a friend asked me to go with him offshore. Our first spot we got to was really promising, two other boats were there and one was chumming up the mangrove and red snapper. We start chumming and with in minutes we had nice mangrove snapper and big sow reds in the slick, first drop with my little mangrove snapper rod loaded up with just 12lb test for freelining small baits in the chum slick was slammed by a big red snapper, the big girl cleared the 110ft from the surface to the bottom in a hurry, that rod couldnt come close to slowing her down.
As soon as things were looking promising some one in the boat next to us hooked into a shark, no big deal, common practice is to pop it off so people can still fish. This @$$hole fought that shark for 45 minutes which completely shut the fish down. After he FINALLY loses the shark we still couldnt get the fish to come back to the chum.
We move a few miles to spot #2, shut the engines off and can just see the big amberjack just 10 or 15ft down. We throw anchor and start chumming, in seconds AJs from 10-50lbs are blasting on the surface, we pitch live bait at them and BAM, fish on! For anyone that has ever caught an AJ you know that after three or four fish, especially if you cant keep them, you dont want to catch another! They call them reef donkeys for a reason.
After getting our rear ends whooped by AJs we start back with with the snapper, but since they werent on the chum we bottom bumped for a while. I ended up with the big red of the day at 14lbs.
Over all it was a good trip but with amberjack and gag grouper closed and our mangrove snapper spot shut down, we only put red snapper, a couple lane and vermilion snapper and some small mahi mahi in the kill box. Oh well, it was fun and have some good eats.
Anyhow with a forecast of 1ft seas I jumped when a friend asked me to go with him offshore. Our first spot we got to was really promising, two other boats were there and one was chumming up the mangrove and red snapper. We start chumming and with in minutes we had nice mangrove snapper and big sow reds in the slick, first drop with my little mangrove snapper rod loaded up with just 12lb test for freelining small baits in the chum slick was slammed by a big red snapper, the big girl cleared the 110ft from the surface to the bottom in a hurry, that rod couldnt come close to slowing her down.
As soon as things were looking promising some one in the boat next to us hooked into a shark, no big deal, common practice is to pop it off so people can still fish. This @$$hole fought that shark for 45 minutes which completely shut the fish down. After he FINALLY loses the shark we still couldnt get the fish to come back to the chum.
We move a few miles to spot #2, shut the engines off and can just see the big amberjack just 10 or 15ft down. We throw anchor and start chumming, in seconds AJs from 10-50lbs are blasting on the surface, we pitch live bait at them and BAM, fish on! For anyone that has ever caught an AJ you know that after three or four fish, especially if you cant keep them, you dont want to catch another! They call them reef donkeys for a reason.
After getting our rear ends whooped by AJs we start back with with the snapper, but since they werent on the chum we bottom bumped for a while. I ended up with the big red of the day at 14lbs.
Over all it was a good trip but with amberjack and gag grouper closed and our mangrove snapper spot shut down, we only put red snapper, a couple lane and vermilion snapper and some small mahi mahi in the kill box. Oh well, it was fun and have some good eats.
