Site 1. 8/19/17

Jessica, Scott, and me got a little bit of a late start hitting the ramp around 8. Tide was high at dunlawton which made catching bait hard. We managed a few in the livewell and headed out of the inlet around 9. The ocean was beautiful. Almost flat. We made good time running wide open , around 35mph, on the way out to site 1. We had to be in around 3pm otherwise we would have run out deeper.

We encountered several large bait pods of what I think were some sort of sardine. Not sure but they hung around the area all day. We tried, and failed, to cast net them several times throughout the day. Extremely fast! We were able to get several on sabiki rigs. Barracuda were everywhere. Dozens.

Before we had the idea to sabiki them fishing was kind of slow. We got a few beeliners, and a nice red snapper. Tons of grunts. We caught 3 what I believe to be almaco jacks. We were not positive so we released them. After we got some of the livies it was much better. We each caught a nice mangrove snapper. Scott caught a little barrracuda and I caught a pretty nice one.

We saw two big manta rays under the boat for a while. They made several passes under. Pretty neat. We packed it in around 2:30 and headed in. The wind started to pick up but still a nice ride in. All in all great trip. Fun day.

 

I was glad to see they changed it to 1-2@8s when I woke up. Almost no wind that made for a nice ride but hot when fishing. I was pleasantly suprised by the larger mangs in only 65-70 feet of water.

As soon as we pulled up and started to fish three other boats showed up. We were all pretty close but never got in each others was. Thats the price you pay for sticking close to shore on a beautiful weekend day.

 

You see how fat that snapper was from feeding on those bait pods. Lol.

 

Thank you. We fished the exact same spot for two hours before catching the sardines. Within 45 mins of using the sardines we caught all 3 mangos. I do not think we would have caught any without them. It was busy. I think everyone concentrated around that spot because the bait pod just sat there for hours on the surface.

 

Any of you guys ever eat the almaco jacks. I have read they are pretty good.