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capt hoop · #1 01-12-2013, 11:15 PM

There is a saying at our home. When the phone rings things change. Today was one of those days. My plan was to get up when I wake up and after breakfast and the fog burning off put my bay boat in the water and play with the red fish all day maybe adding some trout in the mix. Just relax.

6:00 am I wake up to "Fishing in the dark" my ring tone on my cell. Hunter Calabro of Paradise Outfitters was on the other end. "Hey Hoop you want to fish with me today? My deckhand woke up sick this morning" My response as I was hitting the deck; On my way. Give me a half an hour. Yesterdays left over coffee in the micro, jump into cloths, gather up a few items and out the door.

This was the only offshore trip for the day. It was a company trip useing 6 individule boats. The forecast was for very rough seas all day as it has been most of the week. SE winds 15-20. As breezy as it was the fog was very thick so we never pushed off till about 8:00. The boats all have radar but assembling everybody together and getting started took some time. About 12 miles out beyond the mouth of the river the fog cleared up. We hit a shrimp boat we had to run across and nothing at all on it. The water was good but it was dead.

We trolled 2 rigs and a sunken rig for wahoo Nothing happening. At the sunken rig we change setups and drop for amberjack. First drop nothing. Reset and drop again fish on.

Fish off! Today is not looking good. New bait, reset, try again. This time we drop and hook up almost at once. I was playing with this guy telling him it is only a 20 pound fish. This fish was taking advantage of him. Once on board he realised the fish was just about what I said it was.

The second amberjack got hooked up and I knew it was a good deal bigger. When it came in there was no doubt.

Our third one was once again hard to find. After a long time and loosing a bait to one of them we get hooked up. This is another good sized one. After some time and the fish hurting this guy even with a harness on I hear him say---"Man this is making me feel like a P***y." Did I bite my tounge? NOT! All in the fun of fishing

There were some of the group on the lump giving it a try. They had trolled several rigs on the way out and had absolutly no luck at all the rigs on the way out. The wahoo either are not here or just shut down for the day. Even the amberjack were not agressive today. They were also not having any luck on the lump but having all our Aj's in the boat, Nothing on the shrimpers, and no wahoo around we had to give the lump a try. We set up a chunk. The old way of anchoring there has not been done much in the last few years. All the boats were drifting thus covering more ground. The other boats found some sharks. We managed to hook up a pair of bonito but they were spaced far apart. A king managed to have the circle hook get in the right place so we added that to the box. The customer wanted to keep it so we did. We got bit off by a bunch of it's family but at least we were getting some action.

Near the end of the day the sharks found us. Most were blacktips at 4-6 feet. Knowing the fog was still waiting for us to come in we all decided to call it around 2:00. Most of the boats were only able to get limits of amberjacks. We did something different by finding a king.

The high hook for the day was the only other boat that was able to get something besides amberjacks. He found the blackfin and scamp on another sunken rig that he was getting Amberjacks from. We never got the rough seas and high winds they had forecasted. We had a bunch of big waves from all the winds the last few days.

On the way home this evening I hit one of my special spots alongside the road to see if I could get some fresh fish for my two big cats. I did a little "Fishing in the dark" myself.

I could only find rat reds so they had to suffer with fresh amberjack belly scraps.

Life is Good!
Fishing is not a matter of life or death. It's more important than that.

CAPT HOOP -- OUR FREEDOM

calcutta37 · #2 01-13-2013, 09:04 AM

Nice report. I'm out here in MC 809 right in between Ursa and Mars and i have been seeing Tuna busting and a few Mahi around. One of the cooks caught a nice bull last night on a popper..