Shared Delusion

RJH and TLH had taken the boat to Boca Grande and Sanibel for the weekend. On Monday May 29th, they stopped by a artifical reef and with silver spoons, it was non-stop fishing action on Spanish Mackeral - from morning thru 1:00.

The reef was in 20 feet off the beach south of Anna Maria Island

Happy fishing, 
Eric

We had bought some weird spotted sardines from SE Liquidators. We also stocked up on shrimp at O’Neils. Today was a pure surface action day.

We wstopped at the Betty Rose and it was covered in schools of barracuda - very odd behavior - I’ve not seen them school up before. We had a huge and i mean HUGE barracuda jump 5 feet out of the water just behind the boat - it cut a wire leader! We all saw the jump. It was incredible. The belly of ‘cuda bounced a little bit it was so fat. I’d estimate 5 feet long and much thicker than a football. We caught a little Tunny but it got cut in half

we left after that and planned on stopping at surface action but none appeared. We did see many flying fish between 40-60 feet deep. In fact we saw the most action south of the betty rose.

At 70 Feet, on the way to grouper country, we saw about 9 boats in a long line, so we stopped and drifted with the group. On a sardine! RJH caught a keeper Kingfish on the drop. It tangled our lines and I hand lined it in for the gaff. I had the idea that if this was good, 80 feet hard bottom would be better. So we left. Just off of the drift a few 100 yards was a lot of good hits on the bottom. We also say many school hitting the surface but we could not tell what they were.

The Grouper country at 80 feet was deviod of life on the bottom. We did see many small Mahi Schools but no other activity. We dropped by the Sheridan and not much was happening there either.

On the way back home, We stopped back at the betty rose and chummed with dead baits for 30 min with no takers.

Happy fishing, 
Eric

The weatehr looked good, but as soon as we turned out of Egmont channel it was brutal waves. We tried the skyway for some mackeral - tons of bait! Schools were so dense the dark spots were visable from far away. We say one rolling tarpon but no fish activity at all. After a wind blown hour or so we bailed and headed in.

We got skunked. Hopefull next weekend will be better conditions.

Happy fishing, 
Eric

 

I had a plan…

It failed horribly.

We were going to go out further than ever before and try to catch some Red Snapper. I was so confident, i dragged Gregg out to partake in the cooler filling action. Right off the bat, the marina was out of sardines (kind of expected) and no shrimp. My plan relied on many shrimp. So we got some finger mullet - a poor subsititute. We had a box of sardines left, but due to multiple thaws and freezes they were now mushdines. A stop on the flats for white bait with three throws filled both bait wells and 1/2 gallon of dead chum baits. As any experienced fisherman knows - you can have to much live bait. The curse of perfect throws over massive schools is all the biats die in the bait well - not enough water move thru them to keep them oxygenated. So once we got out deep - we had about 20 left

We left out Egmont channel, thru probably 100+ boats fishing for kingfish. It was unbelievable. Some people expressed frustration towards us, but there was no place to go. I got many hands flow up in but i always split the difference between two boats whn passing thru much of them and tryied to cut ahead rather than behind them, figuring they were trolling. I felt I had the right of way and never came close to clipping any ones lines. I can’t imagine what it was like at 2:00 in the afternoon.

We stopped at our first numbers in 110 feet SE of the mexican pride. We did see some signs of fish below, but after a few test drops and no bites we moved on. Next stop was 130 Feet South and SW of the Pride. All the spots I had looked desolate. Only one new spot showed up that looked good, but nothing took our lame baits and the wind / current was not too cooperative for the drop.

So I gave up on my Red snapper plan and we left for the Mexican Pride. Only two boats were over the wreck! Both boats were friendly. Once we anchored up, we were a bit off the wreck, but still managed some nice mangrove snappers and some yellowtails. I caught 2 small groupers that I could not identify, maybe strawberry or scamps? Kind of slow day, but we put 6 fish in the cooler. Everyone caught fish. Robert caught a massive Mangrove Snapper.

One of the other boats hand lined in 2 goliath groupers. They had trouble venting them, their first drifted to us, so we got to see one up close. I wish we had take a picture but it felt odd to take a picture of a fish we did not catch. We tried to vent it and i thought we had it, but the grouper never went down. They anchored up and saved the grouper. Our venting tool broke so I used the needlenose pliers

We decided to head back in, no signs of surface activity the whole way in until the 60-80 feet zone. We saw less than 10 flying fish - odd to be in shallow but not out deep. Also some good bait scools on the depthfinder. Some sargassum was in that zone too. The first real fish sign was mackeral crashing bait within a mile of egmont and desoto. We could have stopped but it was 7:00 and time to head in.

Happy fishing, 
Eric