When I am on a charter I am not allowed to take certain types of fish for myself. My friend gave me a call yesterday and invited me to go with him and his cousin today. Our plan was to go east and target red snapper and mangrove snapper. At the dock in the morning things were not as the weather man told us. With 17 mph winds, storms in the area, and 3 foot seas we were not sticking our noses out in a 22 foot boat. We changed plans and tucked into a semi protected area.
Our first stop got us a small but legal mangrove snapper. I landed a look down. we also got a red snapper but it was about a 5 pounder. Although a keeper we had just started and knew we could get much better. We were only in 45-50 feet of water We decided to go to a deeper rig and put some red snapper in the box. We would find out later in the day we wasted time making that move.
We bounced out to our destination getting an occasional soaking by a few waves. Once there it was game on and we put 6 good red snapper in the boat in less than 10 minutes.
As we were heading back the sky was threatening. We heard thunder and saw lightning but it seemed like it was far enough away and not moving anywhere.
We settled in picking away at the mangrove snapper. Our goal was a 3 man limit of both red snapper and mangrove snapper. The mangroves were stealing a lot of our bait but we were also hauling a few. A lot were 13-15 inches but we also found some very good ones. While we were going through bait picking away we were also landing a lot of very good red snapper as big as or in some cases even bigger than we had already kept. These big red snapper were right on top with the mangroves. All were released using an R&R fish flipper.
I did not even have to handle any unless they fell off in the boat. This one was about 18 pounds.
We fished for them until we ran out of bait. Our box was looking good and we also had 16 mangroves in the front box.
We were headed in at 12:30 with 6 good red snapper and 27 mangroves. 3 shy of our goal but very satisfied. They each got a full limit of 2 red snapper and 10 mangroves and I took the other 7 mangroves and my 2 red snapper home to enjoy.
Came home and mowed my front lawn and cleaned the iced down snapper this evening.
Life is Good!
Fishing is not a matter of life or death. It's more important than that.
CAPT HOOP -- OUR FREEDOM