Memorial Day weekend brought some great fishing opportunities. I caught tons of grouper and snapper at the Merry Pier on Saturday and Sunday. But the real fun was on Monday, when I was joined by Cap’t. Dick and three of his friends for an extended day trip offshore on the Getaway.

We were all a bit hung over, and the seas were unforgiving in the morning. After a couple of quick bait stops, we had a bumpy run in 2-4 footers out to 105′ due west of the Don Cesar. First up on the agenda- amberjack! As soon as the engines were cut, and a handful of greenbacks thrown out, the reef donkeys appeared in force. A freelined live bait was taked immediately, and the fight was on. We quickly boxed our limit of 5 fish, up to about 35 pounds. My arms still ache.

Next up – grouper and snapper. We made a few drifts, and a few anchor sets. There was a nice show of fish at each stop, but the bite was a bit slow. No problem- we still managed plenty. Using a variety of baits including cigar minnows, pinfish, lizard fish and whitebait, as well as frozen sardines, we managed 2 keeper reds, 3 nice gags, 4 large mangrove snapper and a giant lane snapper.

As always, the Captain and crew on the Getaway were fantastic, working hard to make sure everybody had a great time and caught plenty of fish. The boat performed flawlessly in some fairly demanding conditions. And the weather was perfect, except for that pesky 15-20 knot East wind.

So, tonight it’s grilled amberjack, and tomorrow fresh grouper fillets. Thursday will be a snapper dinner, then anything left (and there will be plenty left) will be vacumn sealed for the deep freeze.

And, just so eveybody knows that not ALL of the big grouper are offshore… here’s a 23″ gag that was caught Sunday morning on the Merry Pier, using frozen sardines:

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 27th, 2008 at 5:03 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.