Good timing related to this, but in SC. Went and helped put the first set of trout out for this year's Trout in the Classroom today. This is where TU works with a school and gives them the aquarium equipment, the hatchery gives them eggs, and they raise trout until they're big enough to release.
Vermillion/beeliners are much smaller than red snapper. Mostly find them in deeper water too. They don't have a season which is clutch. A lot of times you are using chicken rigs or multi hook rigs when fishing deeper and sometimes you can catch 2 of them at once.
We are headed out in the morning. Running 100 miles to the south east , will be kinda straight south of Mobile. Going for snowy grouper, yellow edge grouper, beeliners, etc. It's gonna be blowing a bit -15mph down to 10 mph . 1 foot seas out to 10 miles then 60 miles out 2-3 footers at 5 seconds. Quartering sea on the way out and following sea on the way in. Bringing the 18,000 saragossas -one with a live bait hook , the other I'm going to rig with a butterfly jig. Bent butt 50W for fighting bigger fish. Both my electric reels on bent butts will be the main weapon of choice. And the 30Ws for trolling. My neighbor who does a bunch of offshore fishing told me this is good wahoo weather. But also we might try to pick up a bonita or something for fresh cut bait. Hoping to fill the box with some groceries. Also going to see if this 84 Rhodan holds us in the chop. Also probably most excited about this new high powered transducer. Will try to remember to take some screen shots of what the imaging looks like.
Caught yellow edge grouper, long tail sea bass, porgie , and beeliners. And a shit ton of out of season red snapper
Missed a nice one Must've followed my shaky head for awhile but didn't make its move until I gave it one last bounce a few feet from the bank. Didn't get a great look but it sure looked like a fat ol white belly on it as it flipped me off and swam away. Need this Spring weather to stop being bipolar. Maybe 70s next weekend.
Beautiful day to be on the trout stream. In my haste to get out the door, I left my fly vest at home. What an idiot. Luckily I hadn't knocked the rod down last year, so I had one fly, #18 parachute adams. Fished for about 4 hours without losing it, somehow. Caught 4 little native brookies. Felt like a knucklehead, but it turned out fine.
Fish are spinning and dying in Florida, and scientists don't know why A federal agency is taking emergency action after droves of fish exhibiting strange behavior turned up dead on South Florida shores. Reports of this "abnormal fish behavior" state fish in the Lower Florida Keys are "spinning and whirling," according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. And while scientists remain perplexed as to why, what's particularly concerning them is the series of smalltooth sawfish deaths that could be related to the event, prompting the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to get involved. Since March 24, at least 109 of the endangered fish have been affected and more than 28 have died, with some exhibiting the whirling behavior before their death, FWC said. However, NOAA Fisheries sawfish recovery coordinator Adam Brame says the total mortality number is likely greater because the sawfishes are unlikely to float after death. To date, fish necropsy data shows no signs of a communicable pathogen or bacterial infection as the root of the strange behaviors or deaths, FWC said. Water temperature, salinity, pH and dissolved oxygen are also not suspected to be involved. But as efforts to nail down the issue continue — including the collection of water and tissue samples and the carcasses of the dead sawfish — NOAA isn't waiting around for answers. Spoiler Next week, the agency's Fisheries division is initiating an emergency response effort to rescue and rehabilitate the smalltooth sawfish before there are additional deaths, it said. This is the first time an effort to save the fish from the wild has been undertaken in the country, and NOAA is expecting the process, assisted by FWC and local partners, to be complex. Mystery over fish die-off in Florida "It's important to note that active rescue and rehabilitation are not always effective in saving stranded animals. However, it can still give us critical information to learn about the nature of the distress," Brame said. "We're hopeful for positive outcomes from these rescue attempts and grateful to our partners for their support as we work to protect this endangered species." smalltooth sawfish is one of five species of sawfish belonging to the ray family of fish, NOAA says. The up to 16-foot-long creatures live in tropical areas and estuaries — "semi-enclosed areas where rivers meet the sea," per NOAA — and in the U.S., they can typically be found in Florida's coastal waters, making shallow areas their home. But habitat loss caused by coastal development and accidental fish capture led NOAA Fisheries to list the smalltooth sawfish as an endangered species in 2003, making it the first marine fish to receive federal protection, according to the agency. Some of the sawfish live in designated critical habitats, while others in the wild will now be rehoused until scientists can resolve the issue plaguing their native waters. According to NOAA Fisheries, some of the affected fish will head to Ripley's Aquariums, while others will go to Mote Marine Laboratory or Dynasty Marine Associates, Inc. The goal is to release all the rescued sawfish back to the wild once the research and rehabilitation process is complete, Brame said. To help in its investigation, FWC is asking Florida residents to look out for any abnormal fish behavior or signs of any sawfish. You can submit a fish kill report on the commission's website or send an email at [email protected].
The plan was to go 100 miles south east and do a dedicated deep drop trip in 400-600 feet of water at the Ludwig Pinnacles which are straight south from Alabama and near the ledge. The targeted species were yellow edge grouper, snowy grouper, beeliner, and other deep water fish. The day started early around 4AM. The final bill on gas, ice, and bait was around $660. We shoved off the dock at 6AM and once again I was running in the dark with nothing but radar, charts, and one of my friends at the helm keeping an eye out as best he could. The Simrad Halo 20+ radar is excellent so we were pretty confident even in the dark. We almost canceled the trip over wind and waves as the seas were predicted to be in the 2-3 foot range at the Dauphin Island Buoy 60 miles offshore. Windfinder said they would be 2.5 feet at a 4-5 second interval and the wind was predicted to be 11-15 mph most of the day. Once I got 10 miles offshore and past the barrier islands in unprotected open water the wind picked up and it got bumpy. But in the 27 foot heavy deep V boat I was able to run 30 miles per hour without us getting slammed around too bad. After running for about an hour and a half we wanted to see how rough it would be once we stopped the boat and started to fish. So we pulled up to a mid range spot about 60 miles offshore at a cut off rig in about 150 feet and dropped down some lines for trigger fish which were in season. All we pulled up were red snapper. The boat was rolling a good bit in the 2.5 footers and we decided running another 40 miles south east into the teeth of this chop would be miserable. We pulled an audible and decided to go due south which would give us more of a quartering sea and more pleasant ride. We'd still be about 100 miles offshore and in about 400-500 feet of water deep dropping. I made comments on the way to the final destination that if it was any rougher I wouldn't want to be out in it, we were right on the line of doable and misery When we arrived at the final destination, the waves looked huge around us. I could see Ram Powell in the distance as well as Virgo and several other platforms. As the boat rocked and rolled, I grabbed the deep drop 4 pound weights and the deep drop multi hook rigs out of the console. I stripped off my bibs and took off my pullover as it had warmed up and the combination of heat and rocking motion was making me nauseous. I grabbed the electric reel plugs out of the console and plugged them into the electric reel outlets . The Daiwa Tanacoms flashed on and we were in business. I popped half a dramamine and grabbed a beer. My buddy took the wheel and putted us up to the exact spot we wanted to fish. His friend retired from offshore charter fishing and gave him the log books with a diary of all his spots. My friend had plugged all those spots into his Navionics app and for the rest of the day we drifted over spot after spot. They were labeled in the log book as "yellow edge grouper." After only about 20 minutes of deep dropping our other friend started puking repeatedly. For the remaining duration of the trip he was out of commission and laying on the coffin box or on the mezzanine. So it was just two of us driving the boat around , setting up drifts, and deep dropping with the electric reels. We mostly caught porgy and beeliner. But my friend pulled up a nice yellow edge grouper. When I saw the grouper emerge from the water I screamed because it was the first grouper ever caught on one of my boats. I also got excited when he pulled up a long tail sea bass . It was an exotic and beautiful fish I've never seen caught in person. I'd say the final tally was probably 15 beeliners, 10 porgies, the grouper, and the sea bass. I was super interested to see how my new Airmar 1KW transducer would perform. I was surprised when my friend said those are fish on the screen at 400 feet. In that depth, a cloud of fish looks like what I'm used to reading as general water disturbance in shallower depth. At the greater depth, fish marks are much smaller. Now I know what to look for in deeper water. At 1:30PM we decided to call it because we had a 3 hour drive back in. It was pretty rough about 50-60 miles of the run but the last leg of it was a lot smoother and we were able to run about 37 mph home. Even with it being rough it was still an awesome trip and I got some good experience deep dropping which is an absolute blast. It will probably be several weeks before I get a pass from the wife to go again on an all day trip. In the interim I’ll be day dreaming about future offshore trips and tinkering with equipment for next time.
First day the winds weren't blowing sideways in awhile. Water is still pretty cold. Big ol head, little ol body
I booked a week of mountain jungle Golden Dorado Fishing at Tsiname Lodge in Bolivia for late August/early September. Should be sick.
Went to this stream to try and find more brook trout. The area had a fire back in 2016 and the fire fighting and trail reconstruction efforts dumped a lot of sediment in the stream and decimated the brook trout population. Previous DNR surveys a few years back had found some but above the falls I found no signs of any fish. So maybe a future restoration project.
These were my Grandpa's who had them given to him by his Dad. I'm going to lightly clean these bad boys up and get them back into use. Then someday my boys can have them.
Current fishing plans: The next trip is going to be a deep drop trip again for grouper , sea bass, bee liners. Deep dropping is just easier than the tuna or pelagic trips because you don't have to sabiki for live bait and I have more friends interested in deep dropping than pelagic fishing so it's easier to get a crew together. But I'm also planning some trips to the floaters over the summer. Half the time when I say floaters people don't know what I'm talking about. They are basically huge floating oil platforms past the shelf in 4,000-10,000 of water that are either attached to the bottom by a bunch of anchors or have essentially spot lock thrusters that constantly engine them into place above a well. Those are about 100-120 miles from Ocean Springs. During the summer with the later sunsets you can do a day trip and leave super early and come back at sunset and fit it all into one day. Run about 1.5 hrs to some smaller rigs to sabiki for bait. Then run another 1.5 hrs to the floaters. The end goal is to come back with at least a few 50+ pound yellow fin and a bunch of blackfin. Also you'd dedicate at least an hour to trolling around /near rigs and color changes/temp breaks for wahoo. So you'd hope to put at least one wahoo in the box. You might get lucky and find a floating log or piece of debris holding a bunch of mahi. And you can also dedicate an hour or so of deep dropping if you can fit that much time in and add some grouper to the box. Sometimes it's super difficult to do all of that in one day. Overnighters are hard to get the wives to agree to -hey watch our kids for nearly 48 hours while we go fish and drink beer. I think my crew is more interested in day trips.
Also notice the lack of paddle. I was about 5 miles from launch and was praying that my peddle drive didn’t break bc my paddle broke
Also kinda wild how I caught this fish. It was negative tide and there is a sandbar…small channel….oyster bar/bank. I usually catch fish by the oyster bar but a bird swooped down after mullet and spooked his fish that was just chilling on the sandbar so I knew it was there Took a few cast to entice it but was a fun fight. Had my camera on, forgot it was running so when I set the hook i then reached up and turned it off. Damn muscle memory. So I have the hook set and the moments after release lol
Heading out after to work to Chandeleur. Watching the sun rise while walking tossing a top water in one of America’s few uninhabited treasures will never get old Hopefully Gump will slow his yacht down and bring me some sashimi for lunch.
Yall have a blast. I'm jealous. The wind forecast for tomorrow is magnificent. Should be the lake of Mexico. The Chandy guides are reporting schools of bullreds if yall ever get bored and just want to play with them. The sheephead spawn has turned off but they are catching some nice trout out there right now.
Knocked another stream off my list of SC brook trout streams. Then I went and explored a section on another one where I could hear a waterfall from the road. Really steep to get down to it and then tough to find a way through the rhododendron, but worth it.
Make shift bridge to get across. It's about 15 ft above the stream. They put it together when they were doing stream restoration last year. Here's a shorter lower one I also crossed.
Gassing up the boat tomorrow and packing it down with 300 pounds of ice. Saturday morning will have the boat in the water at 4:45AM and headed south. Going to run 85 miles to a platform in 600 feet of water. Will hit a rig about half way there to sabiki for around 40ish live baits , probably mostly hard tails. Once we get to the final destination I will spotlock downcurrent of the rig and and we'll drop down some hardtails to the depth where we are marking amberjack. The AJ limit is one per person so we'll catch 4 of them. Then that same rig will hold grouper on the bottom. So we'll use the electric reels and try to pick up grouper. Also you can catch tile fish here. Once we have our AJs and try for grouper , we'll bounce around other bottom structure for deep dropping in that general area. I doubt we'll have time to troll for wahoo.
Got rained on for most of the day but had a really good day catching browns and rainbows. Rain to a nearby stream to catch a brook just to finish out the slam. Also caught a few chubs and daces.
Ran 200 total miles yesterday. Burned 150 gallons of fuel IIRC. Boat did great. 3 40-50# amberjack(3 man limit) , a lesser amberjack, an almaco jack, 10 beeliners, 3 snowy grouper, 2 red porgie , a long tail sea bass, and a scorpion fish.
Just finished three days fly fishing for tarpon in Islamorda. Blew 20 mph almost the whole time. Great shots. Great looks. Not one fucking bite. Infuriating. Only solace is no one landed one in the fleet while we were there. The bite was just plain off. Can’t wait till the next time.