Fished on 5/21/2006
Water Temperature: .
Water Clarity: Clear as it gets
Seas: 2 foot dying down to nothing
Weather: Blue bird day in the low 90's with the hint of a southwest breeze
Fishing_for: Red Snapper & biting fish
Boat: dialtone
captain: Chris Dalton
Report:
Well, the weather and sea gods did not smile upon our chosen day for the Fishcraze.com Gulf Coast FISHTOGETHER.
HOWEVER, Sunday, May the 21st was a completely different story.
Fishcraze (Danny Howell), Crazyfisherman (DJ Howell), Ty Green, Gary Gates (Red) and myself actually got a little sleep Saturday night and were up and at 'em early Sunday morning. First, we procured World Championship Snapper tickets 'cause it was the last day of THAT tournament and I had a nice hold out spot I was hoping would payout. I had been soaking my pinfish traps since Thursday night, but, only had about 8 or 9 good pinnies and a croaker and a grunt to show, but, it beat the heck out of nuthin. (Plus, we got a half dozen fat crabs that we boiled up for the awards diner appetizers).
We launched Gary's 21' Cape Horn "Dialtone" aound 6:30 and headed for three in close stops to see if anything was happening where it was last week, and well, it is NOT. On to the super secret hidey hole to see what bites.
The seas were a bit bumpy on the ride out, but, continued to smooth out all day to near perfection. Upon arrival at my best chance hole, I found a fairly steady northwest to southeast current and a light west wind. The Furuno 600L showed fish marking from 20 feet to 70 feet and not concentrated. But, they marked like big fish and there was nobody close, so we could spend some time and see if we could wait out a bite. The plan was to use nothing but circle hooks so, just in case, we would have no problem with the rules for the snapper championship tournament.
I think it was DJ who hooked up first on a whole, fresh dead pogie. Not a show winner, but, a gaffer and the skunk was off of the boat. There was a swing and a miss by Red and Ty's rig kept coming up tangled. Things just weren't playing out as I had expected, yet. This place has produced most of my best snapper for the year, so I still held high expectations.
Red's big sealine rod bowed over good and we had a really nice fish in the boat to get everyone more concentrated on what we were looking for. DJ got him self hooked into a shark and while we were dealing with it, Ty hooked into what seemed like a good fish. It ran all over the place collecting every line on board including DJ's shark. We managed to do the chinese fire drill and untangled everyone and sink a gaff in Ty's first ever king mackeral, on a 60# mono leader and circle hook on a fresh dead pogie. Nothing like the smile someone's first king puts on their face. The current and wind had pushed us well of the spot while we got everything straightened out, but, it gave us a chance to re-rig everything.
After Ty caught his king, he put another gaffer sized snapper in the boat. Things were picking up, but, not quite where I thought it would be. Danny kept fishing the live bait and hooked up with a decent 6 or 7 pound snapper I gaffed from the wheel. Danny rebaited with a nice sized live pinfish (with my personal snapper picking setup no less). DJ put another good fish in the boat and was on his way to being king daddy hot stick. But, Danny's pinfish got nervous and soon the Ugly Stick was bent over hard and the Penn 4/0 was giving up line. I said, "Hey, Danny, you might want to reel that in a little before you get taken to the house". Danny said, "Uh yeah, I can't reel any." Hhhmm, this was the kind of fish I was looking for. We got everyone else up and out of the way to make sure there were no tangles. After a slow and steady tug of war, and Red on the gaff, Danny boated his best ever Red Snapper. It was a nice sow with a fat belly and I thought it'd go at least 18 pounds. I could see several boats within about four miles and decided we had to take leave of the spot.
Somewhere in there someone caught another keeper snapper, cause we ended the day with 6 keepers and two of those being pretty nice. But, the nice weather brought out everyone that had ever seen a boat. I wanted to check a few spots, but, things were just two crowded, so we I decided to hop published numbers on the way back in.
On the way to the first one, I came across the bouy that marks where the Senecca VK77 pole was. I had heard that some nice ling had been caught there, as well as, that it was a good place to catch some hardtails. Someone else had the same idea and we arrived almost at the same time, except this super courteous individual decided it would be a good idea to race right to the bouy nearly running into it and then jamming his engines into reverse and totally "smoking" anything off of it. He runs a 26 or 28 foot HydraSport with twin 150 Evenrudes, and his demeanor matches the engines name, "RUDE". They stayed just long enough for me to recognize a few folks on board. They split and we fished it a bit longer before heading to the spot I had marked as a destination earlier.
In two shakes of a lambs tail, we were on the spot I have wanted to see for a couple of weeks. Upon arrival the Furuno lit up. Danny was first to drop a bait, like the next to last pinfish and asked where the fish were marking. All the big red blobs were at about 20 feet and some around fifty, but, I advised on the higher fish. Well, that didn't much matter because his live pin fish was anihalated by a "shark". Danny said, "I see a bunch more". It didn't take me but a second to realize that his "shark" was a ling, and a STUD. We cleared the deck and I tried to let Ty and DJ know that when and if that big gal got into the boat, they needed to be no where near it. "Why", they asked. I said "Cause, ling break things when you gaff 'em and get into the boat. You know like chairs, rods, reels and people legs". They got the point.
Everything went about as well as you could ask. It was probably a twenty or twenty five minute dance. The fish came to the boat pretty quick, but, then decided that wasn't a great idea. On it's second round near the boat, Gary couldn't get a good shot at it with the gaff, but, he took a try anyway and fortunately, nothing bad happened. The drag worked well, the line didn't hit the boat and Danny took direction extremely well. With everybody working toghether, a little luck and a great second gaff shot by Gary, the big ling was in the boat. Slimey five's all around. Danny has now caught the biggest snapper of his life and the biggest ling of his life, pretty kewl.
We fished there a bit longer, but, nothing else to show. Heck, at that point, I figured the day was made. About every other published spot on our way in was occupied. I took a chance and checked a "boat" spot. The fish were definietly there, but would not bite a thing. I headed off for another "boat" spot and Ty put a nice trigger in the boat on pogie on a circle hook. (Ty figured them circle hooks out).
Gary put two more trigs in the boat and we all decided it was time to come to shore.
We took the cooler of fish to the Marina just to get a good wigh on the big snapper and the ling.
Danny's all time personal best ling went 45.5 pounds. Gary and I both thought it would hit 50 pounds. Danny's snapper pulled the scales down to #16.55 pounds. The belly on the fish made it look lots fatter, but, my hand held scales weren't far off from the state's scales.
I want to thank Danny, DJ, Ty and ecspecially Gary for everything they all did to make today a really great day fishing in the Gulf.
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