PC report - July 4th, 2015......ROUGH!!
LilOrange
Posts: 1,190 Officer
Well, opening weekend of gag grouper season had us planning on going out a ways to the SE yesterday. Those plans changed dramatically when we cleared the rocks at about 6am & saw what awaited us. Man, was it rough out there.......solid 4's, 5's, & a few 6's; not the 2-ft or less forecasted. Decided to troll around the buoys for a little while to see if we could pick up a King or two while we also formulated game plan B & hoped it would lay down a little.....it didn’t & no kings were to be had. It was also about that time that our bottom machine decided to not show us anything. Turns out to be a transducer problem. Good thing our secondary unit was working fine......good investment last year. Always something with a boat!
Original plan was to head out about 35-nm to the SE. Too rough for us to do that....outside of our comfort range & waves like that had me queasy for the first couple of hours. We did keep easing out in that direction & hit a few spots a lot closer in......all to no avail. Since we really didn’t have any good spots in that direction that were closer in inside state waters, we moved to plan C. Made a long run back to the west to some spots we did have in state waters in that direction. We had caught a few decent red snapper & red grouper in that area earlier this summer before being overrun by triggerfish. Well, I guess the triggerfish have eaten all of the ARS’s & RG’s because that’s all we caught......one trigger after another. Which was fun but, not what we were after & couldn’t fill the box with them. My little nephew did have a blast catching them on a small bass rod.....so, that was cool. We could literally watch them on our bottom machine swarm up off the bottom to get to our baits & only had to drop down about 30-ft to get hooked up. Crazy! Anyway, we know where to go to get some triggers next year if they ever re-open the season!! LOL!!
The seas did finally lay down a little in the afternoon. And, I did manage one keeper king.....on a speed jig of all things. It was just average size; so, no photos of it. Was a good tug on light spinning tackle.
We’ll be back down in a few weeks to try it yet again. One of these days the stars will align for us........we’ll get calm seas & get to go further out like we want to in order to try deeper water spots. Until then, I hope everyone else catches em up!!
Happy 4th of July !!
P.S.- actual fishing trip on the 3rd, not the 4th.....wrong date in title.
Original plan was to head out about 35-nm to the SE. Too rough for us to do that....outside of our comfort range & waves like that had me queasy for the first couple of hours. We did keep easing out in that direction & hit a few spots a lot closer in......all to no avail. Since we really didn’t have any good spots in that direction that were closer in inside state waters, we moved to plan C. Made a long run back to the west to some spots we did have in state waters in that direction. We had caught a few decent red snapper & red grouper in that area earlier this summer before being overrun by triggerfish. Well, I guess the triggerfish have eaten all of the ARS’s & RG’s because that’s all we caught......one trigger after another. Which was fun but, not what we were after & couldn’t fill the box with them. My little nephew did have a blast catching them on a small bass rod.....so, that was cool. We could literally watch them on our bottom machine swarm up off the bottom to get to our baits & only had to drop down about 30-ft to get hooked up. Crazy! Anyway, we know where to go to get some triggers next year if they ever re-open the season!! LOL!!
The seas did finally lay down a little in the afternoon. And, I did manage one keeper king.....on a speed jig of all things. It was just average size; so, no photos of it. Was a good tug on light spinning tackle.
We’ll be back down in a few weeks to try it yet again. One of these days the stars will align for us........we’ll get calm seas & get to go further out like we want to in order to try deeper water spots. Until then, I hope everyone else catches em up!!
Happy 4th of July !!
P.S.- actual fishing trip on the 3rd, not the 4th.....wrong date in title.
Livin' the Dream !
Replies
I've got a feeling your next effort will pan out. Bad and good seem to come in succession.