Cape Coral - Fort Myers - Sanibel
|
RSS Feed
|
We met up at Cape Yacht Club at 530am sharp. We pushed off shortly thereafter and made our run in the dark out thru redfish pass. We had friendly skies and seas with some small rollers and 2 footers on the way out. We made our way out to 70 ft to look for some snapper and grouper to take back home. We had a fairly steady bite, with good lanes coming up with with a keeper red grouper after the first drift. We made one more drift which equated to a couple more snapper and a porgy for the fish box.
We pushed on out another 14 miles or so to an area ive caught some really nice grouper and snapper. We proceeded to catch more nice lane snapper to 16" and a few more legal grouper for the box. Both the guys got taken to town by what were surefire firetruck red grouper or large gags. We got the hookups but couldn't keep the fish from getting back to their hole/breaking us off on the bottom. 0-7 today on the big boys. We did get a surprise baby thresher shark that hit a butterflyed bait fish 1/2 way off the bottom on the upward retrieve. The ride back in was phenomenal with seas laying down to 1-2s. Final tally in the fish box was 3 red grouper, 3 jolthead porgies, 2 dozen lane snapper and a couple vermillion snapper. Some good eats in their future Headed out about 40 miles where we drifted an area. The kids used homemade chicken rigs while the adults got the carolina rig with big hook and big bait. The fishing was fast and consistent with lots of legal Lane, Yellowtail, porgy, and vermillion snapper coming up for the fish box. Bryant boxed our only keeper red grouper of the day, although we did have several hooked up that won the 10 ft tug of war.
About noon thirty the bite began to slow so we headed out a little further to a wreck to try our luck at some big tuggers. First bait down hits bottom, gets inhaled immediately as im passing the rod off to Bryant. IT makes several line screaming drags, but begins to surface. What we initially though to be an amberjack turned out to be a really nice cobia. As soon as it saw the boat, it dove again. IT did this several times, each time taking a little less line. With some great teamwork, I was able to gaff the fish and into the boat. After the adrenaline and excitement wore off, we made a few more drops, successfully hooking up, but getting took to town by what surely were large AJs. One even managed to break a 7/0 gamagatsu circle hook, a first for me (Ive seen other cheap hooks bend and break, but gamagatsu have held up incredibly well to everything Ive thrown at them). |
Archives
January 2026
|