A good friend of mine (Scott) just bought a new Wellcraft 252 Fisherman and wanted to make a 50+ mile run out of Freeport yesterday. We broke through the jetties just as the sun was coming up and were greeted with typical gulf chop.
We stopped around 30 mi. after pounding through sloppy 2' seas to load up on snapper...
A couple of amberjack wanted to play too.
At one point I had a smoking run on a freelined sardine while we were bottom fishing.
It was a fun tug-o-war for 10 min...the fish finally made another smoking 100 yd. run and broke off mid-spool.
After we limited out there, we kept pushing further out as the seas had calmed down. We stopped to make bait at a couple of rigs and the barracuda were out in full force. They were trying to steal all of our blue runners.
Once we had some baits, we went looking for some larger amberjack or grouper. As we pulled up to a rig and dropped the first two baits down, there was a loud explosion overhead. It turned out to be a fighter jet breaking the sound barrier...interesting to say the least while sitting under a rig in the middle of the gulf.
The first bait we sent down was hit immediately by something big. Despite quick work with the boat, we were not able to get the fish out of the rig.
The second bait gets hit and Scott goes to work with another stout fish.
We work from one side of the rig to the other trying to get the fish out, but this toad wasn't going to cooperate.
Well into the fight, the fish breaks off...
We regrouped and kept at it until we were out of blue runners.
We hit several other rigs on the way back in that were stacked thick with bait and kings, but we were looking for a big ling. After a couple of stops, we found a nice one and it quickly inhaled a freelined sardine Steve pitched at it. Once hooked, the ling just hung out and never really ran around. Steve tried to stick the 50+" ling with the old gaff we had. That didn't go well...the gaff ended up in two pieces. The fish was still green and I screwed up trying to boat the fish the second time. The hook pulled and the ling was gone. Everyone was cool about it, but it wasn't the way I wanted to end the day.
We never found any large weed lines or big rips. Everything was scattered.
It was a great day on the water! Congrats to Scott and the new boat...it is going to be a fish catching machine!
Cheers,
tp
