Who's going Saturday

Reel-Lucky

The forecast looks superb, game on. 

drgibby

Fillin deer feeders Saturday.

 But I will be going Sunday once the big minus tide comes in enough for me to get the boat off the lift.   

RJMurphy4142

Going! Out of Bradenton.  Trying to determine if I’m going WEST or NORTHWEST.  Looks like the gag bites been NW. 

bigfinn35

Definitely headed out. Further south than most of y'all but gonna try to hit my spots off of Bradenton or north Sarasota.

hook_em

Good luck  guys.  I  hope that fog we had  today doesn't show up tomorrow.

Reel-Lucky

Fog seems to be huggin' the land, report this morning was it cleared about a 1/4 off the beach.
Going anyway, radar and slow if need be.

clarosa

drgibby said:

Fillin deer feeders Saturday.

 But I will be going Sunday once the big minus tide comes in enough for me to get the boat off the lift.   

Ran today and boy we almost didn't! Could barely get the boat off the lift and then barely make it to ramp to pick up clients. Had to put out of the Hudson channel with the tide being so low and middle of channel only like 2' deep. Tide was SMOKING most of the day and bite was terrible for keeper sized Gags until it let off and some pigs came to play. 

drgibby

Super slow bite yesterday for us. Did not leave the dock until 8:30 due to the big minus tide. Picked up 4 or 5 dozen live baits from a buddy's bait barrel that he had left over from the day before. That saved time hunting bait. Tide was ripping. Fished 3 or 4 spots in 50 feet west of Clw. that had good shows and always hold fish. The bite was anemic at best! Ran north of Anclote to a couple of really good rock piles in 40 feet that normally produce lots of smaller gags and a few keepers and I think we caught 3 or 4 dinks.  Started getting a bit worried, it is afternoon and no gags in the box.
Decided to run west to a small break in 75 feet that seldom lets me down. Great show, fish were biting but certainly not on fire. Ended up with 2 nice fish and broke a couple off and that was that.   Hit a small rock in 50 feet on the way in, after the tide change, and picked up 2 more decent fish.  
The weather was great and at least we got to go fishing!
Sorry no pics.

Reel-Lucky

similar results here, except no keepers. Had to wait until around 9:00 to leave, the boat was so low in the slip getting on and off was not gonna happen until some water came in.
Due west JP in 60' all shorts, amazing how grunts never get lock jaw. Beautiful day on the water other wise.

Phins_360

Left Friday 3 Dec around 1530 out of JP.  Went to the far west side of MG.  Spent the night out there came back on 4 Dec.

Didn't get much on the troll.  One bonita on a cedar plug on the WWB.  Disappointing.

We got to the SE part of the MG around 2230.  Bite was slow.  I move around to some spots further west as these get less pressure from the mosquito fleet.  It was slow then took off.

We kept moving around and getting fish until around 0130 then the bite stopped.  Also didn't help that the taxman finally found us.

Crew went to bed and I pressed up NNW.  By 0430 I was on some of my numbers west of the MG.  We hit ii pretty good there too.

Our catch was metric tons of mangrove and Porgies and Red Grouper.  We probably caught about 17-20 RG, I lost track honestly.  Average size was ~25inch. Heck we even caught a real fine ARS out there.  Of course it went back, just like the RG.  We got rocked quite a few times by what I presume were gags.  I was driving the boat so not fishing but my guess is gags. We were on some real "gaggy" structure most of the night.

No live bait used as my boat does not have a live well.  I think if we had some fine pins we would have killed the gags out there for sure.

For the record, I've been fishing the eastern GoM for about 40 years.  Never have I seen it like this. From shore out to 92NM + , flat calm.  The weather couldn't have been better.  We had 5 anglers on my boat, to include Will (he's the man, always love having him on my boat - so much biology knowledge I am always learning something from him).

We passed Florida Fisherman about 2 miles out from JP bridge, we waived and tooted the horn at you guys as we went on by.

Some pics attached of the ride out and back.  My boat is a 2002 48 Ocean SS with twin 800hp Detroit Diesel (MTU) Series 60 motors.