Chilly and breezy… Well, it was downright cold… Anyway, myself, Under Contract, Sellsfish, Circle Hook, and On The Mark, headed out in search of the elusive grouper. It was about 30 miles offshore that Sellsfish let us know that he didn’t bring the bait, so we had to try to make our own. We search high and low and eventually put the sabiki rigs to work and caught a few critters that could jumpstart us to a few fish. I don’t think we even started fishing until about 11:30 or so, but when we did, our opening workout was a few nice donkeys. Nothing like getting the arms stretched out first thing in the morning. Shortly after that, a couple of 23" gags come to the boat and are safely released without taking pictures of them or sticking our hands in their gills.
But then, Circle Hook started yelling something about his rod being bent over and up from the deep comes the largest gag of the day. Shortly after, I start yelling scamp, but unfortunately, my scamp looks exactly like a spotted moray eel. That would be my first of two for the day. We also caught a big fat bigeye snapper (one of the coolest looking fish out there). We catch a few more groupers until about 1:30 and then move inshore to prepare for a dive.
Although, the hardest preparation was the mental preparation that it took to strip down into swimshorts in 50 degree air. Under contract and I hit the bottom a couple of times and score some decent gags and a couple of large lobsters for the day. Vizibility was crystal clear on the second dive. I could make out black spots on the ocean floor while I was still 65 feet off of the bottom. Turned out that those black spots was grouper just on top of the ledge that we were diving. There were probably 50+ of them. I would say that there were probably over 100+ gags on that dive with about 20% of them being big brutes and many more being just short of legal. Also saw a big ray come in that was covered with about 5-6 30lb cobias. Also saw another bigeye snapper on the first dive. They are
Looks like you’re the clear favorite to win the little holiday tournament now.
Negative. Didn't you see that we didn't have any snappers and very few scamps? Everyone knows that you get your limit of snapper and scamps on every trip, so I think you are still favored to win by 50 points. We just hope to cover the spread.
I have never limited on ARS and any species of grouper both in the same day.
You have thousands more hours of experience than me.
You have untold knowledge from your 200+ dives.
You have been having successful trips at least once every two weeks recently.
You should win, and I should do just enough for it not to go down in the books as an azz whipping…
I have a feeling that I will get skunked though; reelly.
Luke 8:22-25
We have bad karma on us.
You bottom fish more than I do…
You know how to read the sonar better than I do…
We’ve only bottom fished a couple of times this year…
These were our first trips to the bottom since the summer time…
We only hope to put up a good fight. If we win, it’s because we had a good day. Nobody can discount the fact that we have just as many bad days as good. And we both know that a one day tournament doesn’t prove anything.
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Nice fish, Skinnee and crew. I have to agree that those bigeyes are one of the coolest looking bottom dwellers I’ve ever pulled up.
They are pretty interesting. I've only seen them on a handful of dives, but my observations are that they are usually glued to structure. I've probably only seen 10 of them, but every last one of them was sitting on a little shallow hole as big around as a softball and probably 6 inches deep or so... As in, they sit on their hole like a hen lays on a nest of eggs whereas groupers and such will swim around quite a bit. Last year, I saw a big grouper that was well large enough to eat this little fish get too close to the bigeyes hole. The bigeye charged the grouper kamikaze style and struck him and immediately returned back to his nest. The grouper fled off with tail between his legs. Pretty interesting how fiesty they are to be so small. Anyway, I assume that if you catch one, then you must be pretty ■■■■ close to where he normally sits.
Thanks again skinneej for another great day on the water. Great crew to spend the day with.
Though we didn’t have a camera on the boat and we were too cold,wet and it was dark when we got back to the dock to mess with pics, I did take pic of a sampling of the catch when I got home.
