Fishing 8-21-10

Headed out yesterday morning on my dad's boat with him, his neighbor Ed, and his neighbor's son Tim who was down visiting from New York. We wanted to hit a spot about 22 miles out and get into some grouper. We got out there and drifted the area, and I managed to catch a 22" red grouper and 15" triggerfish. After a couple of hours of fishing the area, that was still all we had in the box. Tim had caught a remora, but we were wanted something for the box, so we headed in to a spot about 7 miles offshore.

This is a spot where we are almost guaranteed a mess of mangroves and grunts, and every now and then we mange to catch a keeper grouper, but that's usually during cooler weather. Ed caught a barely legal triggerfish shortly after getting to the spot, and then the grouper started coming in. We caught several nice reds and gags just under the size limits, but managed to put 4 legal gags in the cooler. I caught one more big red grouper, but it was about 1/2" short. We couldn't believe we didn't catch a single mangrove snapper, and only 2 small grunts that weren't big enough to fillet.

Ed got broke off by something very large several times. He swore it must have been a Goliath the way it hit. Then my dad put on the last live pinfish we had, dropped it to the bottom and no sooner did he set the rod in the rod holder but BAM! That big ol' Ugly Stik bent double! The fish got into a hole and wouldn't budge, so dad gave it some slack for about a minute. The he reeled the slack in as fast as he could and caught it by surprise and up off the bottom. He got several good cranks on him, then it sounded again, but couldn't get all the way down. About 15 minutes of back and forth, and finally this 70 pound Goliath grouper rolls to the top in all it's fat, golden glory! They snapped a few pics, and we unhooked and revived him and off he swam. One of the most beautiful and impressive fish I've seen caught in a long time!

Attached is a pic of the gags in a cooler waiting to be filleted. Dad had already reduced my red to a couple of nice fillets in a ziploc, and tonight I'll transform them into a delicious main course! It was a great day!