Sunday, June 1st on the Mar-T

[capt_dalton]

Snapper season finally opened and the seas were nearly flat calm. We had the Zebra Club drinking team on board for a 12 hour fishin’ mission. My plan for the day would take us out in search of Amberjacks and then fish our way back in looking for trigger fish and beeliners with a couple of red snapper stops to end the day and top the box.

We made bait fairly quickly after getting used to the current near shore that was running like a river. We pulled high speed lures for 35 miles with no takers, but the first hard tail in the water was engulfed by a nice 24# king mackeral. Granted, it was intended for an AJ, but, it was not a bad way to start the day. We donated several more non stainless steel circle hooks and hard tails to the toothy ones and put another of their kind in the boat on a cigar minnow drifted on a king rig. Since the kings were being so aggressive there, we went a bit further south to try for AJs and found them waiting and hungry. We went through the rest of the live bait there and put 5 nice keepers in the box and had to release just as many undersized. A nice red snapper also fell for one of our livies there and got a free ride back to Dauphin Island with us. We tried one more rig for AJ with only one extended battle that was won by the fish to show for our effort.

We started fishing our way north looking for trigger and beeliners. The crew was thinking I was a little off my rocker as I was making them release every snapper we were catching. I assured them I had plans to stop at some snapper spots that would produce much bigger fish, but, they could keep any legal fish the so desired. They shrugged their heads and said, “OK, you’re the boss”. We did keep a couple of 20” fish that did not vent.

We made two stops before we found the first trigger bite and had boated 6 when I looked up and there was a boat sitting dead on top of me. I had been preoccupied with keeping the boat into the current and my deckhand was busy taking fish off of hooks and baiting folks up. It happens I suppose, but, that doesn’t mean I have to like it. I moved off the spot, but, they were within 100 yards of me. I have another spot about a mile away and we fished there for a bit while I watched the other boat try to catch some snapper off of the gift he just received. He didn’t stay long. Maybe he couldn’t hone in on it or maybe it was just hungry trigger fish there and they didn’t want what he offered. Oh well, it happens.

We made several more stops looking for other box fish when I tried a very old barge number. No fish marked on it, but, I figured we might as well send down a butter flied ruby just in case there might be a hungry grouper hanging out. It took like two seconds for the angler to hook up and put a nice Warsaw in the box. We dropped a couple more times, but, no takers.

The clock was beginning to catch me and we were still pretty far offshore, so I decided to put some water behind us and knocked off half a dozen prospective spots and got to the red snapper fishing part of the day.

The first snapper drop was, as the kids say, “Da bombdiggity”. I had three guys with sow rigs and three with two hook gear. Everyone dropped, and everyone caught something. I think our biggest snapper was caught on that drop. He later weighed in just under 17 pounds. There were quite a few small beeliners caught and released and a few ruby redlips to help repopulate the live bait situation. The same guy that caught the first big red snapper there was hooked up again on his very next drop and caught the second biggest snapper which weighed 14 pounds. (This was the same cat that caught the king on the AJ gear earlier….I was beginning to see a pattern). Since I had been found on one of our earlier stops, I was more watchful and thankfully so. I spotted a boat off to the west of me headed seemingly north when he veered my direction. I pulled well off of my mark and told the crew to watch. As we sat a couple hundred yards off the spot he slowed down and gave us a little “fly by” a few yards off my port bow. My deckie gave him the ‘You’re #1 salute”. I figured I wouldn’t risk putting that spot in jeopardy so I hopped up on plane and gave our last “neighbor” a little company for a few miles to the north. This guy couldn’t seem to drive a straight line to save his life, so maybe his close pass by was just a by product of his inability to navigate. I fell back and let him get out of sight so I could let the guys drop on the spot I had been saving for opening day. This was to be “THE” big fish spot. Two weeks ago we couldn’t keep 20 pound snapper off of our small squid baits while searching for triggers.

The fish marked pretty good. The baits were deployed; live bait, dead bait, squid, pogies. Notta….nothing…..very bad sign. I had the guys check their baits one by one. All were good to go. Finally one hooked up and it was putting up a heck of a pull. We had everyone reel in so as to not mess up a chance at a quality red snapper. The fish came into sight……..shark………..gggrrrrrrrrrr. One the next drop a live bait was clipped off at the hook…..more signs of shark. I had this happen to me a couple of years ago on a really good spot. Waited all day to fish it then got there and the sharks had staked it out. Man that chapped my hide. We had 6 nice red snapper in the boat, but, I had to make 6 more to get the legal limit and not much time to do it. I guess I am blessed to have some good numbers to turn to. I punched up some digits fairly close by and treated the guys to a red snapper feeding frenzy. Everyone had smiles on their faces for the ride in and we had a pretty nice couple of boxes of fish for this group’s yearly trip.

Total tally for the day was 5 Amberjacks, 12 red snapper, 6 trigger fish, 2 king mackeral, 1 beeliner and 1 Warsaw grouper. I honestly have no idea how many red snapper were released, but, to say, “A lot”, would be an understatement.

A couple of the guys took some digital pictures. If they email them to me I’ll post them up and add them to the report.