Since I have not said much on the site for a week or so, I will make a nice long report here about nothing out of the ordinary except AJ maulings and toadfish tastings.
Saturday, my brother and I went out of Edisto to get enough fish for a fish fry… So we went straight to the ledge to begin with and succeeded in what could have easily been limiting out on bucket liners, red porgies, scamps, etc. First spot I hit was a ridge in 150’. Moved to get away from the AJ’s, and got a half dozen B liners and a few more grouper off a spot in 190’ before the AJ’s ruined that spot too. I have never had such a bad time with AJ’s ruining larger fish coming up off the bottom. They have been bad for not letting live bait down to the bottom and preventing any grouper being caught, but I got very highly pissed at these things for what they were doing to our fish Saturday. AJ’s started destroying every fish we’d bring up. We lost several nice B-liners also. It was disturbing. I reeled these fish up as fast as I could turn with a 5.8:1 ratio with my Avets’ high gears, and they still came from everywhere and mauled everything. This happened to 2 scamps and one red grouper that were 20"+ fish! One donkey got hooked and he busted 80# tackle and had the heaviest trevala rods they make bent over so far, the braid cut a piece of the forgrip off. I am gonna call these donkeys 100# plus sized. Seriously.
We salvaged a few fish from their attacks though, but we got tired of trying to get away from them while we knew we were on fish. Rolled towards the hill at 1PM, but I saw a weed patch that called to me like a siren; I’m telling you. I have never felt the need to catch micro dolphin this badly y’all. We did need to add some meat to the pile for the fish fry, and I did have a box of squid in the bote. Did not have any spinning tackle on board, and it became quite sad after 6 were in the bote. We left the poor things alone to eat squitches in September and be called 40 pounders on one of the NC or FL internet foru