I burned a vacation day Monday because the weather looked perfect for the wife and I to get a few miles out and catch some fish. We headed out of PCola pass at about 520 from SCM. Except for about 10 mins of heavy rain around 830, it was perfect all day. Pretty flat, light breeze, just great. Made it 25-30 miles out trying some bottom we found previously and scouting some more, we found the vermillion snapper right away which is her favorite. While she fished for those I was working a slow pitch jig. I have become obsessed with catching fish that way and have been hooking up a lot.
It was nearly impossible to get a decent fish to the boat because of sharks and dolphins however. Working the jig, bang, fish on! Wife would crank her rig up so we didn't get them tangled in the fight and as the fish I was fighting got about 50 or so feet under the boat it felt as though I snagged a submarine moving by at 20 mph until the teeth finally cut my leader. This happened about five times in different spots, there was just no way around it. This is my third summer fishing here, has it always been like this? It seems way worse to me this year than the last two but three years is a small data set.
We did manage a bucket full of nice vermillion and two barely legal red snappers for dinner, and a big fat AJ (released strong after a 20 min rehab sesh) and big (to me) bluefish. There was a HUGE shark chasing the bluefish around the boat while I was catching it, got very chaotic for a sec! Good luck out there!
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It was nearly impossible to get a decent fish to the boat because of sharks and dolphins however. Working the jig, bang, fish on! Wife would crank her rig up so we didn't get them tangled in the fight and as the fish I was fighting got about 50 or so feet under the boat it felt as though I snagged a submarine moving by at 20 mph until the teeth finally cut my leader. This happened about five times in different spots, there was just no way around it. This is my third summer fishing here, has it always been like this? It seems way worse to me this year than the last two but three years is a small data set.
We did manage a bucket full of nice vermillion and two barely legal red snappers for dinner, and a big fat AJ (released strong after a 20 min rehab sesh) and big (to me) bluefish. There was a HUGE shark chasing the bluefish around the boat while I was catching it, got very chaotic for a sec! Good luck out there!
