Pacemaker Fishing Forum

We got to the fishing grounds and drifted for 2+ hours with very few bites.....finally, one of the guys hooks up..... but he broughty up a lowly ramora which made the captain a little skidish....not the way to get started. Then Jorge gets slammed and he was able to reel in a Little Tunny (false albacore)....a very nice fight.

Next fish was a small shark that actually went for the mate's toes!

With my pencil rod, I was able to catch three red groupers and four mutton snapers. Two of the snapers were keepers. Not a bad day of light takle fishing.

John, Richard, Nelson and I caught most of the fish but it was Marco who came through with a 4 foot King Mackeral at the end of the trip.

We made the most out of conditions that were not ideal. The water was cold and dirty (looked good to me!) And there was very little current.

In total, we caught 6-7 red groupers and close to 20 snapers as well as the other species I already mentioned.

Using the light rod helped me detect the bite better but yanking a 2-3 pound fish off a reef at 100 feet of water was quite the ordeal (and spectacle). I would do it over again the same way if I was going again.....which I am at 7 am tomorrow!

On Saturday, we will have a crew of 10 from various parts of the country and with varying levels of experience. It should be interesting!!

Pictures will be up Tuesday.

Last edited by Pacemaker (Jul-10-09 8:06PM)

Day 3

A while back, I shipped 3 rods to my buddy's condo on Singer Island. There are some cool places to fish around McCarthur State Park but I needed to figure out the lay of the land. Some of the guys were launching kayaks but that was not in the cards for me.

So it was fishing from the side of the road and luckily, I ran in to Ricardo and his son Evan.....great guys. Evan is a local marine biologist and he was very knowledgeable so I started asking questions and taking notes. He immidiately caught a jack on top so things looked promising.

So I put on a topwater plug and started firing away.It didn't take long and I hooked up with a snook! Sweet!! Evan was nice enough to take my picture. It was great that he was so willing to share info to help shorten my learning curve.

I couldn't stay due to family committments but I will be back.

Back to Day 2

We went out at 7 am and the Capt. put us on some fish right away. I think the crew  caught 7-8 albies in the 1st hour. I spend more time taking pictures than fishing the "lapizito". I did manage to catch a few red groupers but as usual, they were too short.

But the guys wanted some meat for lunch so the Capt. yells out "lines in!". There's just one little problem....I am hooked up to an albie and my pole is bent to the limit!! There was a whole lot of hoopin' and hollerin' going on as I fought the football an inch at a time. The rod I was using has a fairly short butt so I had little to no leverage. My left bicep was smoking! These guys were unmerciful and wanted to move on to catch lunch. Finally, I got the fish up close enough and I told the mate to grab the leader and horse him in but the leader snapped (thankfully) and we moved on.

We then proceeded to catch more albies, 3 king mackerels, a bunch of mutton snappers, a couple of remoras, some pig fish and some more short groupers.

On one of my hookups, I gave my rod to one of the guys that doesn't fish much and he could not belive the difference in the fight. It was cool to watch him struggle to bring up a 17" snapper.

I will add more when I get back.

OK....get ready for the ride!!

Day 1!

Here is Marco with the 1st fish of the day.....



The lowly ramora....one of the other boats caught one of these and one of the guys stuck it to his chest....I am supposed to get that picture so i will post it when I do!



And here is Jorge fighting and catching a bonito....







And here is the shark.....



......don't want to lip this guy!!



The next one is a mutton snapper.....



....and this one is a short red grouper!



Matt the mate loves to fish!



And the next few are "after the catch" shots......







A king fish has met his day....nice teeth!



These were my keepers!

Day 3!

Here is Evan (the marine biologist) hooked up!



This jack smashed his top water offering!



Somehow, I managed to catch this snook!



I can't wait for the next time I go down there.....

Ernie you look like you like to fish.  that was some great pictures.

Fishing is great
Mo

A few more pictures came in....

Capt. Lee



Waiting for the bite....



Hooked up with an albie (I can't get enough of this rush)!



Cooking it up!



The final product!

I was looking over the post again, and it occured to me what a nice batch of photos those are