Well, if the weather holds my dad wants to go out Friday and try our luck. One of his neighbors has some new grouper spots out about 14 miles from Stump Pass we're going to try. If all else fails we should at least get a few snapper!
Well how did it go???? Where are the picks????
Went nice. Great day, excellent weather. My dad, his neighbor, me and my son headed out from dad's dock about 7am. We stopped just outside Stump Pass and used a sabiki rig to try to catch some bait, but no luck, hit 3 or 4 other spots going out, and only got a little squirrel fish (sand perch). But we had about 10 dozen shrimp and some frozen sardines, so we booked on out to a spot about 15 miles that the neighbor had numbers for (he said). We got out there and dropped a marker at the spot, and started drifting the area, in about 65 feet of water.
I was first down with a shrimp and pulled up a 14 inch red grouper. We drifted the area around the marker for about 1 1/2 hours, and caught some keeper mangrove snappers, a couple of nice Key West grunts, some triggerfish, and quite a few undersize grouper (gags and reds).
Then "neighbor" caught a 22 inch gag! Nice fish, and we thought it was about to bust loose. But we needed some bait besides shrimp, so we took a porgie we had caught earlier and sacrified him to better things. We caught several more grouper , but they were all heartbreakers, only about 16-18 inches. We then found out that the spot we were fishing wasn't "the" spot, since the numbers he got were converted from old LORAN coordinates. So we decided to try another spot he had the right numbers for.
We caught a few more keeper snapper and grunts, and several small red grouper at the second spot, then decided to head back to a spot my dad always has luck at, about 10 miles from Stump Pass. When we got there I was still using some cut bait, but my son put on a small shrimp and dropped it down. BAM! SOmething nailed it hard, and he fought it well! When it got up to about 20 feet deep, I could see the red color and thought he had a keeper red grouper. But as he came on up, we saw it was a big hogfish!
If you don't know what a hogfish (some call it a hog snapper, but it ain't really a snapper), it is one of, if not the finest fish you can eat. And boy can they put up a fight! We hoped some othrs would come through, but never did. We caught some more snappers, grunts, triggerfish and small grouper, then decided to run the crab traps for tripletail on the way in. Saw one small tripletail, but he spooked. We also saw several schools of what looked like mackeral hitting bait on top of the water, but they were gone real quick.
Overall we kept 16 Key West grunts, 7 mangrove snapper, 4 triggerfish, a gag grouper and a hogfish. I've got some pics to resize and post a little later. It was a great day!
Sounds like a fun trip with the family. Next time before you go hit the pier at Beach raod and get your pinfish. They are always there.
Posted a new thread, with pictures, of my recent fishing trip with my dad.
http://fofah.s2.bizhat.com/viewtopic.php?t=470&start=0&postdays=0&postorder=asc&highlight=&mforum=fofah
Enjoy!
