Ended up fishing with 3 buddies today. I just put the boat back at O'Neill's the other day and we departed from my lift around 6:50. Stopped at the PAG marker and got some smallish Pinfish to go with the live shrimp I got from the marina. Headed out to the Egmont channel markers and got some nice Sardines and Cigar Minnows to join the crowd in the livewell.
Headed offshore to a spot in 140' and made a few passes trolling. After about 10 minutes and 3 Bonita we pull in the lines. We make 2 quick drifts with jigs and landed 6 or 7 AJ's. Smallest was 34" FL and the largest was 40". Kept our 4 and anchored up to try to chum up some Snapper. Got upcurrent and deployed a chum bag and loaded the Chum Churn up with some Sardines and got to work. Caught a few of the overfished Red Snapper and more AJs on chunks. Mike got his tail handed to him and had his rod explode in his hand on one of them. I landed one on my Snapper rod and live shrimp that was a few inches longer to the Fork than the biggest one that we kept. Probably 42" FL. I cried No Mas and headed to spot 2.
I wanted to head out a little bit deeper, but since we were pressed for time(already 1130ish), I decided to work our way in to 115'. Anchored up and after a few minutes of chumming with the chum bag, Chum Churn, and throwing some cut chunks of Sardines we had a show of fish up to 20' off of the bottom. We tried chunks of Sardines, Squid, and live shrimp on jig heads and bare hooks and kept catching Almaco Jacks. Justin and Mike switched over to fishing the bottom while Jim and I kept trying the upper part of the water column. The light switch turned on around 1:30 and we were able to throw 14 Mangroves in the boat before they turned off about an hour later. Also caught a few more Red Snapper that were 8-20#, 3 keeper Gags 22-24", and 3 Triggerfish, keeping one that was 16" to the Fork. I'd say most of the Mangroves were 3-6# with a couple that were 8ish#.
Ran in between 43-47mph. Fun, beautiful, safe day.
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Originally Posted by gordo35
