Shared Delusion

Saturday was our original plan, but the weather was nasty. So we fell back on plan B. A short half day on Sunday. We were going to target Kingfish and Spanish Mackeral off of St Pete.

In a few less than stellar net throws, we got tons of white bait. Our first stop was the St Pete Reef. No action at all - some small bluefish was the only bites we had. We decided to bail for the hard bottom off of the beach.

We drifted over the Hard bottom in 20-15 ft off of Blind pass. We caught 2 keeper kings and then the wind picked up and we headed in. We meet up with Gregg and had Sushi at the Bayfront Toyko Sushi place - it was great.

A note from this trip - take dramine the night before - I was dead tired Monday at work!

Happy fishing, 
Eric

The weatehr was awesome and we looked forward to a varity of fishing options. O’Neils was out of sardines so we got some finger mullet instead. The shrimp were all very large so we got a few dozen of those too. We tried the new purina fish food chum. A school of greenbacks was very interested in it, but a sardine school totally ignored the miso flavored bits. With a good throw, the sardines and many greenbacks were in the bait well. We had a visitor on the bow.

 

First stop was the 20 ft hard bottom off of Pass-a-grille. We expected tons of bait schools getting slammed by birds and mackeral. Every reel was rigged for kings and mackeral. I even had dreams of a little tunny in the mix. Not a single fish or diving bird was to be seen! It was 8:30 and maybe it was to ewarly but the light seemed right. We headed to the Public reef in 30 ft. to see if the mackeral were hanging out over the reef. Lots of bait schools but nothing seemed to be bothering them. None of the boats at the reef were catching anything. So we pressed on to the next stop.

Egmont channel was packed with boats! at least 30+ the 4-2nd to last markers held the most boats. We pressed on the the whistler. No bait sign at all. The ride out was a bit rough only because of the nagle of the long period waves.

Gunsmoke was next - Finally some fish sign on the sonar. We deployed every bottom / surface rig we had - not a single bite. Even the shrimps were untouched. We did see a huge school of bait on the surface feeding off the gunsmoke but no signs of anything hunting the school.

We headed the the Mexican pride - mainly to pick up an amberjack. We anchored a bit off from the group where some fish signs were. We proceeded to limit out on Yellowtail snapper! We caught our first Scamp grouper. 

We also caught a Mangrove snapper. We had to stop fishing once we got our limit, it was late anyway. The ride back in was smooth - the long period waves helped us - we surfed them in. Not a single bait show on the way back (5:00 ish) but we did go over some great structure. We have 3 more spots to check on a later trip.

Happy fishing, 
Eric