From skimming around the forums, it seems we started the day like many others, hoping to troll the nice, blue water for some pelagics.
We left the dock around 6AM when it started to get light. Stopped in the pass for bait, which was tough with the current ripping as it was. At one point I thought the bottom machine wasn't reading correctly because it said 9 feet, and both John and Dimitri said they weren't hitting bottom. I was having the same issue when I was fishing, but we figured out the issue and managed a nice amount of bait anyway.
We arrived at the Nipple to find lots of gorgeous water, flying fish, and plenty of boats around. We trolled to the 600' line down to 750' or so, all the way southwest towards the Elbow. We had one knock down which we though was grass at first the way it was dragging, but after a few cranks of the reel, a small mahi managed a jump before pulling the hook.
We shifted gears as we neared the Elbow and got ready to bump the bottom. I thought we had caught around 7 scamp when a group of chicken dolphin cruised by the stern. I threw a small jig in the water and got hooked up. Dimitri had done a lot of mahi fishing in Islamorada recently, so he knew how to handle the ensuing fire drill. We put 12 in the box before they either got full or smart (or both).
Back to bottom bumping where we got another nice scamp and a snowy, but it turns out my count was off because those actually got us to 7 grouper on the day.
I was driving the boat when Dimitri asked if I had seen the log 15' off the starboard side. "Nope" was the only answer I could manage with a shrug of the shoulders. Both of us will swear until we die that we saw 3 triple tail break water as we passed by, but out of the 100 or more fish on the log, all we could manage were baby almacos (1/2 pound), hard tails, and our 13th chicken. Tons of life on that thing, but no large predators to be found at that time.
We moved to a different area, had to deal with a 7' shark which ate a cigar minnow on the bottom. On the next drop, we had a triple hook up on AJ, the biggest of which weighed 35#'s back home. When I hooked my AJ, I was sure it was a shark considering the way it was fighting, and I started cussing and praying for it to break off. Luckily it did not, and luckily Dimitri and I were able to untangle our lines, because he had the bigger fish.
With the lid barely closing on the 120qt cooler and a bunch of sore arms and backs, we pointed the bow north around 3:30.
We meant to take more pics on the cleaning table, but as time wore on, we became zombies.
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We left the dock around 6AM when it started to get light. Stopped in the pass for bait, which was tough with the current ripping as it was. At one point I thought the bottom machine wasn't reading correctly because it said 9 feet, and both John and Dimitri said they weren't hitting bottom. I was having the same issue when I was fishing, but we figured out the issue and managed a nice amount of bait anyway.
We arrived at the Nipple to find lots of gorgeous water, flying fish, and plenty of boats around. We trolled to the 600' line down to 750' or so, all the way southwest towards the Elbow. We had one knock down which we though was grass at first the way it was dragging, but after a few cranks of the reel, a small mahi managed a jump before pulling the hook.
We shifted gears as we neared the Elbow and got ready to bump the bottom. I thought we had caught around 7 scamp when a group of chicken dolphin cruised by the stern. I threw a small jig in the water and got hooked up. Dimitri had done a lot of mahi fishing in Islamorada recently, so he knew how to handle the ensuing fire drill. We put 12 in the box before they either got full or smart (or both).
Back to bottom bumping where we got another nice scamp and a snowy, but it turns out my count was off because those actually got us to 7 grouper on the day.
I was driving the boat when Dimitri asked if I had seen the log 15' off the starboard side. "Nope" was the only answer I could manage with a shrug of the shoulders. Both of us will swear until we die that we saw 3 triple tail break water as we passed by, but out of the 100 or more fish on the log, all we could manage were baby almacos (1/2 pound), hard tails, and our 13th chicken. Tons of life on that thing, but no large predators to be found at that time.
We moved to a different area, had to deal with a 7' shark which ate a cigar minnow on the bottom. On the next drop, we had a triple hook up on AJ, the biggest of which weighed 35#'s back home. When I hooked my AJ, I was sure it was a shark considering the way it was fighting, and I started cussing and praying for it to break off. Luckily it did not, and luckily Dimitri and I were able to untangle our lines, because he had the bigger fish.
With the lid barely closing on the 120qt cooler and a bunch of sore arms and backs, we pointed the bow north around 3:30.
We meant to take more pics on the cleaning table, but as time wore on, we became zombies.
