Offshore Central Florida

The seas were kind and some friends were willing to brave the morning chill this Saturday. It was 37 degrees as were loaded the boat this morning.



We made our 14 mile run to my now favorite bait spot and used our sabiki rigs for fish for bait. A sabiki rig is a multi-hook leader with tiny hooks for catching small bait. The baits we catch are about the size of bream. You know, the size of the blue gill and sunfish kids catch on the pond. Here's a picture



We filled the live well with some excellent "snapper candy". They really like the blue runners. Here's one below.



The snapper and grouper also like to eat pinfish. BTW the spines on the dorsal fin of these little fish are like pins. Don't ask me how I know. Here's one.



We ran another 8 miles to a broken ledge in 90 foot of water and began to fish for "real" fish. One of my buddies was already on the ledge and he was catching one fish after the other. Here is a picture of Terry on his boat the "T'sMe". I took this picture when we got back to the inlet at the end of the day. It was too bumpy out there to get a good picture while we fished.



We fished the area all day and we caught lots of fish. We were fortunate enough to get 9 keeper size red snapper and one Scamp. A scamp is a member of the grouper family. It is by far the best tasting grouper you can catch. Here's a picture of some of the crew holding up some of the fish. That brown fish that Dave has in his hand is one of the scamps.




Thanks to Don and Verniece as well as Dave and Cathy for sharing a great day offshore. I can't end the post without a picture of Dave clowning around. We asked Dave to get in the fish box with the fish for a picture, but his wife, Cathy and common sense prevailed.