Fort Pierce Snapper

Just got back from the best snapper trip I've ever been on. I got invited to fish on a buddies boat for our whopping 3 day red snapper season this year. I never fished with Rich before and usually I'm apprehensive about fishing with store customers, but after several conversations over the years I knew he had his head on straight. We met at his dock at 5:30, loaded up, shoved off around 6, and started working our way to the inlet. First stop was the buoy to load up on bait. After an hour of catching small sardines we headed NE to the snapper grounds. It wasn't as crowded as we expected out deep and after a few drifts we dropped the hook on a good show. First dine on the flat line we hook a smoker king only to have him pull the hook before we could get a gaff in him. From that point on we started to beat on the mangroves. They were finicky about the leader size so we stuck with 20-30lb fluoro the whole day. Unfortunately the few grouper bites we got worked us over with the light leader deal. We ended the day with 27 mangos, 1 genuine red, and a couple porgies. The genuine in the upper left hand corner is @9-10lbs to give ya a reference to the size of the mangos.