We spent a week in Destin mid August and fell in love with the place!
I've fished the Texas coast since the mid 70's. I've seen the fishing go from good to off the charts! I've even ran charters until NMFS ran me out of business!
The Red Snapper here have covered all structure from 75' to 400'...I mean covered! You seriously can't fish for anything else in water under 300 feet.
When we were there we hopped on a head boat...couldn't believe we were fishing in 90 to 100 feet of water and only caught 10 or so Red Snapper with 65 anglers onboard!
Making plans to move to your little secret fishing hole in a couple years! It will be great to fishing within 20nmiles and not be covered with Red Snapper at every stop...
Not sure if I can post pictures yet or not. But I have some cool depth finder pictures and underwtater pics of how bad they are....crazy over here
Very odd perspective to the local point of view. Your head boat must have hit a popular hole. Anything less than 100' is slammed constantly by recreational/commercial fishing/diving.
Most if not all locals would agree the clouds of snapper are more of a nuisance at this point at any of the larger or private wrecks.
We caught solid B-Liners...I think you call them mingos...most everything past 75' is so loaded with Red Snapper you can't get past them to even think about catching something else. Most of our Vermillion Snapper hold off bottom about half way to the bottom. When the Red Snapper see a boat on top they come running to the surface. I have a great photo of my depth find where you can see them coming to the top. I catch all my biggest Red Snapper fly-lining whole cigar minnows. On public spots we limit pretty quickly on 28" plus Red Snapper.
Once I figure out how to post pictures...I will...Red Snapper have basically ruined the fishing here. They've eaten almost all the baby trigger fish. ..used to you couldn't get away from Triggers...they are kind of rare to see now.
400 feet of water is pretty close out of Sargent Texas but it's still a 65nmIle run. Sucks to get beat to death in 3 foot chop trying to get outside Red Snapper. Our normal weather is a lot rougher than you have off the pan handle of Florida...most of Florida for that matter. During the 9 day season we will only have one or two day where the water is safe enough for the average recerational fisherman to get out. During June it pretty tough to catch a day with seas less than 4 foot. Most of the boats we seen leaving for offshore while we were in Destin would rarely ever be taken off the trailer here to make a offshore run. Single engine boats are out numbered three to one by twin engine rigs...maybe as high 15% are cats here too...trying to handle the rough water we face regularly
Welcome to the forum- great little place here. I'm always torn between OB and CR - personally.
Hope you find PFF helpful, not to mention it can get entertaining sometimes. LOL don't hesitate to holler if you have questions or need help!
Mike
I promised some photos and just got around to it...typical deep finder view over any kind of structure...all red snapper...you can also see they are coming up to the boat.
Also some very average size red snapper...and some very nice Kingfish
The underwater picture shows how "our" red snapper come to the boat...pics are a couple years old, but I'm on my lap top and dont have very many up to date pics in it...