AFW

By Jason
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Sunday, July 12, 2009
" Success at a near-offshore reef! "

Dedicated in memory of My Mother

It was turning into a "what to do today" type Sunday so the "team" got together, and once again we left for fishing at about 11:00am.  It would be the usual: Karla, Amber, Spike and myself.  But today would be no ordinary day, both from planned and unplanned perspectives.  You see, we left with the sole intention of going to a near-offshore reef.  We had never had success at the few times we have visited reefs, but I was optimistic, once again, that we would "get lucky".

We caught small pinfish along the way at the flats, and we got to the reef at about 1pm.  There were a few others there.  The water was absolutely amazing; it was clear green, and you could see at least halfway down the 30 foot depth, contrary to Pine Island Sound which was nasty brown and cloudy.  The conditions were the best you could ask for: no wind, no waves, hardly a current, and not a cloud in site.  It was a perfect day with perfect conditions, and so if we could only catch some fish that would close the deal.

We watched as one of the other fisherman were catching long skinny fish over and over.  We figured out that these must be King Mackerels.  After a while Kings were all around us.  There were huge schools of bait on top too.  

I got bit off numerous times and found myself spending much of the afternoon retying leaders, and replacing hooks.  But that was OK because in between I would be pulling up quality fish - grouper and snapper.

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After a while, the other boats left and we had the reef entirely to ourselves.  I guess most people had to work Monday, but luckily I had Monday off.

Here's my best catch of the day and my second best catch ever, a fatty snapper:

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Is she calling me a loser?!

Here are some amazing-as-usual sunsets:

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After sunset we deployed the green fluorescent submersible light.  After about a half hour we had an entire colony of sea life surrounding the boat.  But we really didn't know what was there, and we were shocked when I threw the cast net and caught numerous squid!  That is a first for us.  We would catch them, and then the squid would release black ink everywhere.  Apparently that is some sort of defense mechanism.  We caught probably more than 30 squid, and numerous bait fish, and our bait well was black with ink for a while.  What a blast!  Never in our wildest dreams would we have thought we could catch squid there.

We left the reef about 11pm, satisfied at a day well-done.  We were back on land at 1:06am.  

One of the best parts of the whole day was that we didn't catch ANY catfish!

The motor continues to miss a cylinder or two, and it bogs down sometimes.  There is still water in the gas tank and it is getting past my fuel/water separator so I have some work in front of me again trying to correct this.

A few days later we had dinner from this catch:

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