One of those days

[capt hoop]

On Friday I was going to take some guys inshore fishing for Super Strike Charters. That got canceled and they decided to try going offshore as previously booked. I jumped on as a deckhand with Captain Scott King. Nobody had gone offshore for about a week so there was way of knowing where the fish were. With the winds still blowing we opted for the west side to give us some protection and a better ride. Our good part of our morning consisted of trolling several rigs for wahoo or tuna. We never marked anything that looked good.

After 6 or 7 rigs we settled in for a bouncy chunk day on the lump. There were maybe a half dozen boats there through out the day so we had a lot of room to play. We had a lot of sharks and some bonito to keep us busy along with a king or two breaking us off. We did pick up an amberjack.



We had some very big hammerhead sharks giving us action and excitement.



With the sea conditions the way they were we did not feel like running all around the gulf wasting time traveling to other areas looking and the talk on the radio was not encouraging. We caught a vermillion snapper but could not get on any more of them either. We decided to go to a nearby rig to salvage the day with some amberjack. On out first drop we got a just legal amberjack. We were dropping bait down and jigging. We were over a very good school of fish. Much to our surprise we jigged up a small but legal yellowfin. This was a welcome addition.



That mark moved on and we could not locate it again. Our only other fish we were able to get there was an almaco jack. We were happy to add this to our box.



At the dock the rest of the few boats that went out were coming in with similar reports of a tough day on borderline sea conditions. Everybody caught but nothing like what we had ahead of us. We at least had a few for the board. As you can see the fish cleaning table is dry with no activity.



Life is Good!


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

CAPT HOOP -- OUR FREEDOM