Just too freaking pretty out yesterday to not get on the boat. I had no real plan. I did my morning exercise around coffee pot bayou and the pier area and the bay was dead calm so I was going regardless. I had tried all my normal participants and nobody could go. I was going by myself if I had too but one last call to my buddy Manuel. He has gone back to school to be a chiropractor and is getting killed with all the work so haven't seen much of him in the last few months. It was now 9:00 am though. Low and behold, he just got done with midterms and he needed a trip and his wife wanted him out of the house.... He thought I was kidding about going right now but was at my house by 10:00 and off we go.
Had no plan. I had some squid and a couple of mullet in the freezer from another missed trip. Picked some suspect looking sardines at Oneill's and a chum block and took off hoping to get some live bait. Went to PAG. Nothing there to speak of. Went to a normal very reliable bait spot about 3 miles out and got probably a dozen decent baits but the water was like chocolate milk. Probably should have tipped the zabiki with squid but wanted to get going. Figured we could get bait at the markers. The last 2 or 3 sets of markers were surrounded by KOTB boats. Tried at one but no bait. Didn't want to mess with them too much so got out of there. I wanted to fish some of those areas but there were boats everywhere.
We went to the whistler to try and get some bait since there was noone king fishing near that but nothing there either. Went to a ledge # about 2 miles northeast of the whistler and fished some. Lots of short reds. Looked like there was some stuff coming off the bottom in the water column and I was hoping they were mangos but we decided to head out a little more since the reds were all short.
Water was still pretty muddy so we decided to run north/northeast about 12 miles to a bunch of #'s I had. I don't fish north very much. For whatever reason we usually go west or southwest but what the hell.
About 8 miles into our trip I see a really nice show on the screen. Turn around and the bottom just exploded with color. Throw the jug. Drift it a couple times and some almost keeper reds come over the side. But way bigger than the last spot so we were hopeful. We dediced to anchor.
Within an hour and a half we had our limit of Red Grouper and a nice king that is about to go on the smoker in about 20 minutes... Not a bad day for no plan and not hitting the water until almost 11:00 and not putting a line in until noon.
Good times and it was just ridiculously pretty out there yesterday.
Tight Lines....
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