Now onto part two of Out of Season Bottom Fishing trip, now that we had our lunch and finally made it over to our next spot. We put lines back out again, half of us targeting beeliners and the other half of us chasing after grouper. So I stuck to my “grocery getting” tuna meat stick rig bouncing cigar minnows right on the bottom while Yong was sticking to his guns with his slow-pitch jigging setup. The others were dropping down some chicken rigs with the salted Boston mackerel and bringing in some good beeliners and other assorted bottom fish. When finally after most of the day spent jigging Yong finally got a good hit that stuck on the jig.
The fish immediately pinned him to the rail, trying its hardest to get back into a hole in the bottom. But Yong handled it like a pro, using his Ocea jigger to get in a crank whenever he could to keep the fish off the bottom. Those initial cranks will make or break a fight with a big fish, the tug of war of keeping them out of the live bottom. Eventually after being run around the back of the boat a few times, he finally got the fish to the surface. A nice monster of a gag grouper on the jig, probably a year out from becoming a copper belly. A trophy of a gag grouper, that we then took a couple of photos of, vented, and sent right back down, they were out of season. Which sucks but the memories last a lot longer than the fillets.We would have gotten the weight but we couldn’t find the scale fast enough, no point in killing the fish for a weight.
After the fight, Yong needed a break but there was still fish to catch, so the rest of us kept hammering on the vermillion snappers. With several 3+ pound ones being caught, but had to scoot off the spot soon after. Another boat was making a beeline towards us, so we had to get off the spot before they could mark it for themselves. Capt. Tyler spends a lot of time and fuel to find these far-out bottom fishing spots, so I 100% understand wanting to keep them to himself. So after a short trip to the next spot the fishing continued.
Here at the next time, it was my turn for an out-of-season monster. I was still bouncing small live baits on the bottom hoping for either more scamps or red grouper, when something big inhaled the little cig. I could tell it was big because this was the first fish of the day that actually started pulling drag out of my Saltiga 55. Though this wasn’t as sporting of a fight as Yong had, I was still fishing out of the rod holder so, all I did was push the drag lever forward and put the reel into low gear. After that, just winched the big beast up. It was a big 18lb red snapper, which was out of season. Which was my personal best red snapper, and of course we don’t have photos of it because I left the phone in the cabin. But while we had the scale ready this time, again we had to vent the fish and send it back down as quickly as possible. Little bittersweet to let it go, but the fish swam off great so I can’t complain. We knew this would happen coming down here out of season.
After the big red snapper we kept working our way closer to the dock, hitting spot after spot with mainly the chicken rigs to fill out the box and try to get out 1 triggerfish each for the day. This was proving a lot more difficult than expected, with us only getting a bunch of short triggers mixed in with smaller red snapper. But at least we were filling out or limit of vermillion snapper while we did this. Eventually, though I finally got the right one. Instead of letting my baits hit bottom as you would normally for bottom fishing, I counted how long it took the previous drop and then timed it to only go halfway for my next drop. I have found before that big triggerfish sometimes sit high off the wrecks. That was the case this time, netting me the only legal triggerfish of the trip.
After that it was about time to start heading back in, so we brought in all the lines and started clearing the deck. After a bit of cleaning, we put out the high-speed trolling gear and ran towards home. Unfortunately, that wahoo never did show up during the troll back, but hey that’s fishing. At least the view and breeze were second to none up on the tower. Oh, and something to note, you have to pay for parking in Destin now, it sucks but nothing you can do. Make sure you pay for enough parking before you head out, I had to pay an extra $12 because I didn’t set up enough parking time and had add the minimum 4 hrs while I was still 6 miles offshore from my phone.
I say we did pretty good for an out-of-season bottom fishing trip, bringing home plenty of fish for what we could keep. Any day you bring home 10 scamp grouper in the kill box is a good day. After we cleaned the fish and loaded up the cars, we went back and had a nice fish dinner.
