Shared Delusion

 

Its been a while since we last fished. Between the red tide reports and Hurricane Katrina - the last few weekends have not worked out. The gods of NOAA called for 2 feet or less, so we planned to see what the water was like. We got an early start and caught some bait at the marina - we got one pinfish at the marina that instantly died. On the way out we checked the flats NE of the skyway bridge for bait - no sign of life at all. Next bait stop was the Egmont 11 marker got some blue runners under the marker but they died in about a minute. So we decided to head offshoree and get whatever live bait was at the fishing area.

We stopped at the dumping area south of the gunsmoke. Saw one school of feeding sardines - they looked thick like a sardine not thin like a greenback or threadfin herring. We cast to the school but nothing seemed to be bothering them. Our first fishing stop was at 120 feet at the hard bottom SE of the mexican pride. The waves were 1-2 footers and the wind was pretty strong. We needed the sea anchor just to let the 8 oz sinkers hit the bottom! Not a single bite - we gave it about 20-30 minutes and left for the Mexican Pride.

Of note, we did not see any schools of bait being hit by anything. We maybe say only 3-4 feeding bait school out far - worst showing of surface activity in a while.

We anchored up perfectly. At almost every drop we got hit. We caught 2 keeper Yellowtail Snapper and a Mangrove snapper. A lot of our hits ended up as huge Blue Runners - big enough for Terry to ask if they were something else. They were really thick and could have made for decent sized filets. We sent them down with a hook instead. We figured we were getting taken by Goliath Groupers but we were able to make some headway against a few of the fish. Terry brought up what looked like a huge, I mean Huge Cobia but it only had one half of a yellowtail snapper in its mouth - at this point it left us with a ripped up fish. We did not use the yellowtail as bait - it had hit the line first and then the cobia must have hit the snapper. While we were there - A guy in a older tan colored walkaround caught a really big Gag Grouper. We have seen them over the pride before and they seem to do really well. that fish was the biggest Gag I’ve ever seen caught. So Some of our bend poles might have been huge Gags, not necessarily Goliaths.

The water was a olive color all the way out with very limited visability. We could not tell what we had caught until it was 6 feet under the boat. Usually you can see the schools of fish 50 feet down at the Pride. There was more fish around the wreck than last time, so its improving but I sure miss the blue water.

Happy fishing, 
Eric