It was a perfect weather window in early March and I happened to have some great regular customers in town for business. Brian (Pennsylvania), Mark and Jeff (Michigan) and Eric (Ontario) were able to finagle a day away from meetings to head offshore for some much-needed salt water therapy. From their point of view, any trip was a much-improved way to spend a day over shoveling snow from their respective driveways. My bar is a bit higher.
I decided to run to an unexplored area I had marked last year that we passed over during our red snapper season. Exploring new numbers is always thrilling, and I had a good feeling that this gamble would pay off. Unfortunately, the reality of it being called “fishing, not catching,” hit us quick, and the first two spots turned out to be a complete bust. We gave each one about 10-15 minutes, dropping down a variety of baits with different leader thicknesses to no avail. Anyone who fishes in the Gulf knows that if you drop down a live shrimp on 20-pound leader and it doesn’t get a bite, it’s time to move on.
After a short 20-minute run to our second area, everything changed. Just as I was throttling down, the bottom third of the water column on our Raymarine Axiom Pro 2 XL24 lit up like a fireworks show. If this was an episode of Wicked Tuna, the pinging sound would have been echoing loud enough to hear from miles away. A trained eye knew we had found virgin red snapper bottom with the only question being how many could give my customers a real battle. The group caught and released red snapper ‘till their arms could not take it anymore. We lost count at 70 with the biggest measuring in at an impressive 37 inches. As a bonus, we managed to get a few baits to the bottom that resulted in three lanes, a mangrove and two vermillion snapper in the box for dinner.
Our next spot was two miles away and, again, turned out to be a home run. This time, the cluster of fish on the sonar was packed tightly to the sharp rise off the sea floor. Our guess was that it was a wreck, and the school of jacks that greeted us supported that notion. Just like the red snapper from the previous spot, they chewed on everything we dropped, including cut bait we were attempting to get to the bottom for grouper or snapper. The guys went at it ‘till everyone had caught and released their personal best with one probably pushing triple digits.
We hit four more spots on the day. Two were, once again, loaded with red snapper, and we even managed to catch and release about a half dozen gag grouper well over legal size. The other two, well if I need 2-pound pin fish or sand perch in 160 feet of water I know where to go. We hit the dock 10 hours from when we began the day with great stories and pics to share, but a fish box that made it seem the day had been a bust. I am all for fisheries management, and this trip was proof that conservation works. For my northern customers, it would have been nice to just keep three or four of the 200 plus legal-size fish we released that day.