SaltyCajun.com - Red snapper Rough water

Fellow THT member C. White was with me today. We were going to do a snapper trip on his boat but the winds and sea conditions made that impossible so at 4:30 this morning I call him and let him know the only way we can get out there would be in my Glacier Bay. I was at odds which place to go. The winds were SSW on the west side and SSE on the east side and straight out of the south at the mouth of the Mississippi making East bay a mess in that shallow water. I flipped a coin and off we went. As soon as we got out of the pass he was able to see what a good catamaran can do chewing up the seas with ease. We cut through the seas at 29 mph.

Once at our designated area we started looking for red snapper. It usually takes a bit of time for them to find us there and today was no exception. Another problem was getting a comfortable place to fish on the boat without being thrown around too much. We were loosing a lot of bites because of being bounced around and the bait we were using is a bit easy for the snapper to steal. It took a while before we started bending a rod.

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You can see the guy in the background is not doing well at all. After about 3 fish the sharks moved in and the bite died. A school of porpoises decided to play around us for a while also. We now have 2 people chumming very well for us and one of the women not getting involved in any fishing for fear of joining the other 2. After a while the sharks and porpoises continue on and we get into the fishing program again. I will say that both chummers still managed to get into fishing between rail bends.

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The seas were building as the day went on so once we had our last red snapper we changed to mangrove fishing.

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I tucked behind a few rigs looking for some mangroves. We would pick up a small one and then nothing. With our red snapper in the boat I was limited as to where I could go for the rest of the day. It looked like we were not going to be able to add much to our box. I started heading toward East Bay knowing it would be just as rough there or worse and maybe stirred up. Part way in that direction I second guess myself and turn 180 deg. back to the area we just left. There was a boat on one rig and we could not fish I but they were gone now. Once tied up I throw out some chum and we get a double. 1 keeper and one measureable that turned out to be a 13 incher. Anything over 12 inches gets invited to dinner. This corner of this rig held a bunch of small mangroves but there was a lot of action. I had to keep the motors running but not in gear to keep us from being bounced into the rig with the "Seventh sea" wave putting undue strain on the line. Every now and then I had to back one motor up just to keep from crashing into the rig.

About 1:30 We have taken all the pounding we wanted and headed to the barn. I consider this a very good day with a limit if snapper and a half limit, 20, mangroves. The snapper were good and the mangroves were numbers and a lot of action. End of the day gave us 8 red snapper and 20 mangroves.

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