Fishing 2016

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  • #29
The pointy ones are Spanish Mackerel Jim. The greatest majority are mullet. Throw in a few rock bass and a couple of white grunts (the purple colored ones). They're all good. I'm not a fish hog, but have the opportunity to clean and share with a few other folks who don't get to eat fresh fish very often.
 
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  • #34
If you're too busy to fish Willie, you're too busy. Got a chance to do some freshwater fishing on St. Vincent Island today. We caught 61 bass and a redfish and had a blast.
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Beautiful golden color in that fish. it would make a nice addition to a home pond if survivable like Carp.
 
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  • #38
Jay, redfish, also called red drum or channel bass, are amazingly adaptable. They are native to saltwater but also thrive in brackish or completely freshwater like the lakes where this one came from. They were introduced there several years back when extremely high hurricane tides washed over the island. The saltwater killed all the existing freshwater fish at the time, but they have obviously made a great recovery and the redfish are quite at home too with no predators other than alligators.
 
Great pics, I didn't see them all before.

You see any gators out there, it looks like good habitat to this yankee.
 
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  • #40
Pretty good eye there Cory, even for a Yankee;). The place is crawling with em, literally. It's a national wildlife refuge and there's no gator hunting allowed even though they seem to be way overpopulated. We do take some of the overflow from time to time though. They have little to no fear of man and can be pretty aggressive when you bring a fish to the boat. I should've taken some gator pics.
 
Big ray your killin it on hook ups, some nice fish there, looks like your getting out a lot lately

FishMas opened on sat. (its what they call it here in nor cal, its like Christmas for fishing) ;) Rubicon river, fishing was ok, hooked a few, lots of snow run off right now, will be better in a couple of week or so when was calms down a bit

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  • #46
Took another day off and hit the bay today. Had a couple of cobia, grouper, flounder, triggerfish, mackerel and mullet along with some released red snapper. Caught the biggest cobia on bass tackle and it took a solid hour to land him. We must've lost 20 big grouper in the wreck. They are brutally powerful in that first run and know where to go. Several of them swimming around out there have to look like some of the kids I see today with all the metal in their mouths;)
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Thats interesting Ray. I was watching a show about fishing for grouper in sunken ships.

They said it was important to set the hook and then let them do what they want, if you fight them they will swim right back to the wreck and break the line.

I guess if you just drift around with them until you get them in a position where they cant run for the wreck you have a good chance of landing them. Does that sound about right?
 
Interesting, Jim.

Ray, are you saying you see a lot of grouper swimming with old hooks in their mouth, and do they seem fine or impaired?
 
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  • #49
I was telling my buddy today Jim, I believe those fish are swimming up out of the wreck, lining up the bait with a porthole and then diving through it wide open as they take the bait. They hit so hard and so fast that most of them do what they want to anyway, but no, once they get in the wreck, it's over. All the stuff is covered with razor sharp barnacles and oysters and your line is cut so fast you can't believe it. We are using 80 lb line and leader with the drag on the reel screwed down all the way and regardless of how ready you are or how hard you pull, you just can't stop most of them. You'd have to "get ya some of it" to really appreciate it. It's a heck of a workout trying to muscle 'em out. In some natural rock situations they will occaisionally come back out of the hole but even there it's not too common.
 
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  • #50
Doesn't seem to bother them in the least Cory. We caught one today that we had broken off earlier and still had the hook in his mouth. It seems like hooks dissolve pretty fast in saltwater too, one reason I don't use stainless.
 
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