Left home Thursday morning and drove down to Hudson Beach, Florida to meet up with old friends and bend a rod in the GOM for 2 days. 9 of us in 2 boats, one boat primarily spear fishing, and one hook and line. Got there about 1700, loaded the boat, fueled her up, set 3 pinfish traps a few miles out on the grass flats, then stayed up too late catching up with each other.
Got up at 0430, left the dock at 0500, pulled bait traps in the dark with about 300 pin fish and a few other varieties. Well baited, ran out to the NW about 40 miles and 60’ where the gag bite was good 2 weeks ago. Wasn’t good Fri. Had to work for every fish, no gags, only red grouper. Every time we got a decent bite going, the sharks would move in and either hit your bait on the way down, eat your fish on the way up, or eat every short we released. Had to keep moving, catch a few until the sharks show up, then move again. Got a lot of numbers out there. We ran 165 miles and never got more than 40 miles from land.
Saturday we decided to run deep. Again left the dock at 0500, pulled the traps and met our buddy boat off Tarpon Springs before daylight. Ran SW for deep water. Made our first stop about 45 miles out in 80’, nothing much, plenty of sharks. Ran out 5 more miles to some ledges, nothing much there either but sharks and shorts. Marking fish like crazy but nothing much biting. Our buddy boat wanted to spear some hogfish there and see what was happening on the bottom. We decided to run deeper and ran out to 65 miles to some ledges in 120’.
It was game on when we got there, gag, gag, AJ, gag, AJ, scamp, gag, AJ, scamp, didn’t need to measure them, big nurse shark about 400 pounds released, big goliath about 800 that wrecked some tackle and released itself[:0]…then here come the dang reef sharks again and we had to quit fishing. Moved a mile, caught some more, then sharks again. Don’t even know how many reef sharks we caught and released. They are a nuisance in the summer time, hard to get a fish in the boat, impossible for a releas
It’s an odd running boat though. I’ve never fished on it, but fished with it on several occasions. Don’t think I would like it myself, just from watching her run.
