ON THE WATER REPORT by Captain Billy Nobles Well folks, if you want your red grouper, you had better hurry up as the season closes on October 4th, and they are plentiful. We are finding the larger fish from 85’ on out. There are only a few days left where you can get both your red and gag grouper. If you think it’s silly that the closures pop-up; it seems overnight and with no rhyme or reason, you are right until you educate yourselves. There is a thing coming down the pipeline called sector separation where the commercial fleets, charter fleets, and recreational fleets will all be separated and held to different seasons, quotas, etc. This seems to be big business looking to capitalize on a public resource. You can go to thefra.org to learn more as this column is not long enough to explain the wrong that is being done to so many--to only benefit a few. The snapper bite remains on fire--especially the yellowtail! And size seems to be better than we see in the keys on average. Our fish are averaging around 3.5 pounds with the large ones around 6 pounds, all up top, on light tackle. On Tuesday, we left the marina around 8:30am, netted up a well full of live bait, ran out around 60 miles, caught our 5 person limit of snapper (fifty in federal waters--10 per person) and back on the dock by 3pm. Not too shabby, if I say so myself. Now I must come clean, my crew was a little stacked. I had my old mate, Dave Hoffman and his pal Taylor, my new mate, Tony Cimino, and Captain Glen Taylor. With this crew the snapper and grouper didn’t stand a chance. We had several quads, trips, doubles, and even a couple of quints on the yellowtail. We stopped in about 90 feet on one spot. Every one dropped, got our grouper on the dock at three. The inshore bite is going off, as well, with huge schools of redfish all over the bay and by huge, its not only in numbers but in size with plenty of oversized reds. Cut bait seems to be working pretty well along with live bait, and the old standby--the gold spoon is hard to beat. Listen to Captain Mike on 970 AM WFLA from 6-9 am on Reel Animals Saturday. Call in on Saturday’s to WFLA 970 for Reel Animal’s Saturday and Sunday’s to WDAE 620 AM win some cool fish gear from 7-9 am. Also visit our website @ reelanimalsfishingteam and friend me on facebook to see Captain Billy’s weekly catch or call 1-877-FLA-FISH to book your fishing trip of a lifetime and until next week, “Do yourself a favor and take a kid fishin’.
Posted on: Sun, 21 Sep 2014 14:04:31 +0000
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