Went to the ledge to bottom and jig fish. Unseasonably warm surface water, 80 degrees. Smooth conditions outside of brief squalls. As usual, the critically endangered, impossible to find taxman arrived and was a frequent uninvited guest everywhere we went.
Managed to get a good haul of bottom fish past the evil bureaucrats, many Vermilions but with a mix of other species as well like Porgy (one was a nice Scup), White Grunt and Almaco Jack. Had a mahi circle the boat a few times but it would not take a cast jig. Any fish that could not be winched rapidly to the surface did not survive the Sharknado. Live bait fishing for grouper was just feeding the baitfish and rigging to sharks.
One of the odd fish of the day was the biggest baitfish I have caught. This is a Blue Runner that probably weighed over five pounds. I thought it was a bluefish because of the color and shape, but no.
Another odd fish was a 27-inch-long Sand Tilefish that ate an 8-inch-long jig (sorry, missed the photo). We found a patch of Sand Tilefish that yielded the four largest ones I have seen. A common catch when we bottom fish in the Bahamas but the ones we have caught in the Bahamas were much smaller. Quite tasty although Porgy once again won the bottom fish sashimi taste off.
Continuing the theme of another post, saw a turtle offshore. They do seem to be indicators of live bottom but no idea why.
New toys are battery electric reels which I bought to try to evade the tax man. To some extent, electricity defeated the taxman and will probably work better now we are more familiar with operation. Had the idea after a few trips with fishermen that could not crank hard for physical reasons. They had an almost 100% loss rate to sharks so thought electric reels might be useful.
These electric reels have a built-in lithium battery and aren’t hard to move around. Don’t know yet about durability but battery life was not a problem. Bad picture but I think you can see how small the added battery is compared to the reel. The reel is more or less a conventional 50 wide level wind.
Where have these been all my life? Checking bait was easy, dropping was easy, depth setting was easy, level wind worked. Best of all, there were a number of times where the shark ate the sinker on the chicken rig and the fish was saved.
Hope the b******* die from lead poisoning.