Earning a nice fishbox
June 29, 2017
Fort Myers
3 photos




Barracuda (Great)

Bonito

Dolphin (Mahi Mahi)

Grouper (Red)

Snapper (Lane)

Scup (Porgy)

Snapper (Mangrove)

Snapper (Red)

Snapper (Vermilion)

Tripletail
Trip Summary
Trip Summary
Had a great weather window, and no charters on the books, I put together a long range trip to go explore some deeper water. Put a crew together and headed offshore.
We sabiki'd up a ton of nice hand size pins before making the run out deep.
Story of the trip was ZERO tidal flow/current. We would drift an area and move 40 ft in 10 minutes. We did find a floating 55 gallon garbage can that had all sorts of life. It had lots of small banded rudderfish, a giant school of yellowtail snapper, and a few good size tripletail. We picked off the 3 keepers, biggest at 19.5". The jacks wouldnt allow us to get to the yellowtail. Go figure. We also had a small school of mahi come around. We caught 5 or 6 but let them go as they were smaller, 18" fish.
As far as the bottom bite went, We picked off 1 fish at a time,l in various depths, ranging as deep as 300 ft, not getting anything decent going until about 2 AM when we started to see some snapper action in shallower (140ish). Some good size mangos, a handful of vermillion and lanes and 1 legal ars made the box. The morning bite brought some decent grouper, with the biggest being a solid 31 inch fish. Winds picked up a little on our way back in and I was happy to lay in my super comfortable ocean tamer bean bag and catch a quick nap.
Was a fun trip and we definitely earned what we had in the box. Learned a few things which I will apply towards my future trips.