The day finally came today for me to go out on the Redfish charter I scheduled a few months ago. The weather down here has been FOUL all week, and I didn't know if the trip would happen. It rained all day yesterday and most of thursday. Thunder storms like you would not believe. Some places got more than 8" of rain. Anyway, I start driving to the boat this morning and there is nothing but FOG. No rain, but thick fog. I get to the boat and the capt says we will give it a shot. The fog did lift as we were driving to the fishing grounds. First stop was a man made reef to catch some croakers for bait. We used shrimp to catch the croakers. The beach is almost featureless. The water was only 18' deep about 2 miles out. It slopes very gently until 10 - 15 miles out. This is where the oil rigs are. We didn't fish that far out today. There are still quite a few storms brewing out that far. We were able to pick up a few croakers so then we proceed to a drop off about another mile or so out to live line these bait fish for the BULL REDS. While fishing for bait I hook into a black drum fight and land him after about 10 minutes. This fish was around 30 #. I was landed on a 12 # outfit. Remember we were still fishing for bait. What a thrill!
I am watching the depth sounder as we aproach the "drop off" This area drops from 19' to 20'. Yeah that's right - a 1 foot drop off. That is considered a drop off on such a featureless bottom.
We start live lining these croakers and all we end up hooking are small sharks. Mostly sand sharks, and one bonnet head shark. It looks like a hammer head, but with a rounded head. We do this until we run out of bait again. So we start fishing for bait again with the shrimp on the light rods. No sooner do we start with the shrimp, but I hook into somthing significantly heavier. It turns out to be a 33" Redfish. Again about 10 minutes later it was gaffed and photographed and iced. And yes it tasted good tonight.
I took pictures, but don't have them to post yet. When I get them, I will post them.
What a great day!
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