I took advantage of a good weather window and headed out to some nearshore livebottom in about 50’. After a nice easy ride out I dropped my first line around 9a. The small blackfish were cooperating. After the first 4 in quick succession, the 5th fish was clearly something different. About 10 minutes or so after hooking up, I brought the miniature submarine (40"+ redfish) to the boat, into the net, tagged and released. By 9:45 I had caught 1 legal blackfish (I don’t even know how many 11" - 12.9" BSB I caught) , and 2 redfish over 40". I caught fish all morning, everything caught on jighead and plastic tail. By 1p a breeze was starting to fill in, the clouds were getting thicker and I was tired. I harvested my 7 BSBs (13"+ - 14"), and had caught and released 9 lg redfish (36" - 42.5"). As a nod to the Mutton Snapper thread, the BSB were filleted and released into hot oil that evening. I could have sold that as Grouper without argument (except for the size of the fillets).
One last note: one of the redfish I caught had and orange DNR tag in it, but just the stump of the tag. The tag had been clipped, there was no tag#, even at the base of the tag. So my point being… When you catch a tagged fish, if it’s a legal fish and you want to keep it, fine keep it, please report the tag recapture to DNR, they have a small reward (hat or T-shirt) and report that you kept it, no biggie… If you catch a tagged fish and you have to or just want to release the fish, just measure it and record the Tag# and report the recapture to DNR. You do not have to have the actual tag to get the Hat/T-shirt. please do not clip the tags.
