# 54752: Subject: Gulf of Mexico, Alabama

Submitted by capt_dalton (ip 4.153.206.171)

• Fished on 12/30/2005

• Report received: 1/2/06

Water Temperature: 60's
Water Clarity: Clear green
Seas: 1' or less
Weather: Could not ask for amore beautiful day in December
Fishing_for: B-Liners, triggers, grouper and AJ
Boat: Potentially the "Fish Monkey 2"
captain: Chris Dalton

Report:
Well, the forecast for Friday looked toooooo good to pass up. Jerry Whisenhunt and his family are down from Oklahoma for the New Year Holiday and I "persuaded" him to take out the "new to him" 2004 Cape Horn with twin 300 HPDI Yamahas. Man, that is one large fishing platform. And move.......we launched from Billy Goat Hole around 8:30. We had planned to leave earlier, but, being the maiden voyage, LOTS of things had to be loaded into the boat and of course Jerry had to leave the boat keys at home. Lucky him, his vacation home is only a couple of miles away.

We settled into a nice little cruise of 42 mph at 4200 rpms. Smmooothh baby!

Our first goal was to score some live bait. I stopped at the Scott barge to try for some Ruby Redlips. None there, but, it was covered up with red snapper. Jerry's 9 year old daughter Alex christened the boat with it's first fish. It was a double up on red snapper. We played catch and release for a bit and headed on.

Next stop, the Atlantic Marine Dry Docks. The ruby's were there, along with a keeper scamp, that someone who didn't trust me (Jerry) and was thrown back, a nice lane snapper, a few triggers and a beeliner or two. We satisfied our live bait need and I headed south about 36 nm. It was a pleasant and quick trip in the nearly nonexistent seas.

I made one stop at the 385 rig to check for AJ's and triggers. I caught one red snapper, Alex put a big porgey in the box and Gary Gates managed to feed an undersized AJ a ruby. Action wasn't hot enough there so we continued south to our first destination.

The spot marked well and soon we had our intended target for the day, BIG beeliners coming over the sides. When I say we, I mean Alex. She was on fire and the guys, Elton Chavers, Gary Gates, and her Dad, Jerry couldn't seem to catch onto the bite. And smack talk, that little 9 y/o girl was laying it down on the guys. My favorite line of the day from her was, after icing most of her limit of beeliners and being hooked up again, she looks over to Dad on the other side of the boat and says, "Here ya go Dad, you can reel this one in". Almost as good as her reply when her proud Dad said, "Look, you caught one". She says, "Yep, I caught ANOTHER one, you caught ONE". She was a riot. Last year I put a boat name on her that took. "Fish Monkey". She is all over the boat. If it leaves the shore, you can bet she'll be on it. And no matter how big a fish is hooked up, she wants to do battle with it. Well, she wants to name the boat after herself, sort of. She wants to call the cape horn "Fish Monkey 2".

The guys finally started evening up to score and soon the monster fish box in the horn started to show signs of success. However, the fish box is so big, it would take a whale to make it look full. I had 120 pounds of ice and a 48 quart igloo down there and had room to walk around in it.

We hit one more spot a little further south and managed a few more beeliners there and I jigged up a red grouper that was 19 1/2". Also caught about a 6" beeliner on a 6 oz diamond jig, hooked in the mouth. A red snapper fell for the diamond jig as did an undersized AJ and a big white porgy when Elton gave it a shot. I also caught one big eye snapper there on squid. The red snapper were way too frequent there so we stopped for one more try at our first spot on the way in. We iced a few more white porgies and beeliners.

Tally for the day, I don't know, a lot of BIG beeliners, white porgy out the wazzo, one large black tip shark, released, a LOT of red snappers all released, one under sized red grouper, 3 scamp, (one got lucky and was set free to live another day), one bigeye snapper, ruby's, trigger x 4 or 5, 2 nice lane snapper, a couple of AJ shorts and a 5 man limit of SMILES!!!

Great day on the water in an awesome boat with good friends and hungry fishies - PRICELESS.....

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