Captain Chick back on “In Hot Pursuit” back in action for some near shore fall fishing. This honestly is the best time of year to fish S/W Florida. Air Temps are great, water is cooling down, bait all over the place, birds diving with miles of Spanish Mackerels following them.
Well after 6 months of recouping from Back Surgery, healing and rehab Capt Chick got his boat back in the water and was ready for its shake down cruise after doing some upgrades in replacing batteries, few switches and macerator pump, etc. Every boat owner knows what I am talking about.
The crew was more then willing to help out plus the fact we were going to do some trolling for grouper, which I have only done once before in Magdalena Bay in Mexico which is completely different the then trolling here tackle (Lure) wise.
Here we use mostly any brand stretch 25 or 30, braid is the preferred line with a shock leader about 10-15 feet in length the to a small swivel and piece of 40-50 pound wire about 14-18 inches long then onto the lure. Sounds like a little overkill but you will pick up Barracudas and King Mack’s while doing this thus the need for the wire.
Chick chose to troll some live bottom on the fringes of some ledges and drop offs. First run off was a decent size King then nothing for about a ½ hour or so. Changed locations to a nice drop off of about 10 feet, which for the Gulf is huge. I got hit using a mackerel colored stretch 25 and it sounded like a good fish. Got the Gag up to the boat and was about 24 inches or so which we were all glad to see. This means they are finally starting to move in because last week there was nothing to be found.
Back on the troll and Jim got hit pretty good and that rod was doubled over and pulling line off. Once Jim was set he brought in a Juvenile Goliath which our guess was about 35-40 pounds. The fish HAS to be released in the water, other wise if caught bringing it on board can result in a huge fine.
Was getting to around 1 PM and started heading back in when we spotted a school or Permit but being this was a hardware trip we didn’t have any live or cut bait on board, besides Pass crabs are there favorite bait and none were around, so much for the Permit.
At this point we headed in as Chick had a rehab appointment at 3 PM which he didn’t want to miss.
You could tell by Chick face he missed that time on the water, using his boat and fishing with friends, he was like kid at Christmas and was great to see.
Hopefully with this trip things will only get better for our fall fishing down here although I was trying to talk Chick into a American Red Snapper run being we have an extended season because of the Gulf Oil spill a few months back. He didn’t commit right away bit I could see him starting to think about it
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http://www.fishingunited.com/reports/view_report.php?AREAID=600&REPORTID=1897
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How deep were ya catch'n in? 
