Mister John Martin
Gags and ARS go away till another day!
Truck loaded, now boat loaded ready to go South and Deep. Time to make the first trip South combined with the first Deep Drop of the year. Left John’s Pass with high expectations. Trolling started out hot with Spanish Mackerel coming up before we cleared the first marker. About twenty miles off shore the King’s caught fire. I didn’t troll as I was happy to let others get in on the action that don’t get to go like I do. At least 10 King’s came up with twice that many hooked up and lost. My friend Bo asked me to watch his reel for a few, I got hooked up and landed a King in the 12 lb. range. Quite a few large Bonita come up as well. Side note: Bonita is an excellent cut bait for any circumstance and this is especially true for “Deep Drops”.
We started about 3:00 AM on a wreck hoping to catch a wide variety of fish including a few Muttons. Fish were chewing from the start as I got hooked up before my first bait (Threadfin) hit the bottom. Turned out to be an ARS in the 10 LB. range. The first of many to come. A couple small African Pompano came up pretty quickly but as there is only a two per boat limit they were released in hope of bigger to come. This turned out to be a wise decision as two of the largest AP’s I’ve seen were landed in the next 30 minutes. The ARS were aggressive which made catching anything else a challenge. I decided to drop a small Pin Fish and was rewarded by several nice Mangroves. Sadly no Muttons came up as they are often not aggressive enough to cut through while other species are chewing. I know they are there as we fished this wreck about the same time last year and I landed two.
With about an hour before sun rise Capt. Mark Hubbard told us we were going to try and get away from the Red Snapper and target some Red Grouper. Got anchored and as the sun was coming up my buddy Ed hooked up and landed a nice Red Grouper. He would catch 2 more at this spot. He was using slabs of cut Cudda while I was using Threadfin. I caught 4 nice Mangos and turned at least three more in the process. I decided to put a livey down and bang hooked a 12-15 LB. Gag. All of a sudden we were inundated with Gags and Red Snapper. This lead to the Capt saying what I know he never thought he would say. “We have to get away from these Gags and Red Snapper” June 1 can’t come fast enough.
We moved on looking for a place where the ARS and Gags might not be. Good news bad news “They’re everywhere” I felt for the Capt. as he kept moving deeper and to different bottom but the ARS and Gags were there. We did manage to get some nice AJ’s and I got my limit with one coming in around 60 LBS. I also caught two beautiful Scamp Grouper with one being an 8-10 pounder. In an effort to catch something different I put down a big Pin Fish only to land a Gag I kept putting down larger and larger baits only to catch bigger and bigger Gags and ARS. Overall I caught and released 15 Gags and at least 20 ARS.
The Capt. made the decision to go deep starting over 400’ and ending up in 700’. Unfortunately the weather decided to take a turn for the worst and we found ourselves in 20 knot winds. This combined with the current ripping made the Deep Drops difficult. Several Tile fish along with some nice Barrels came up. I also saw some of the biggest Pink Porgies I’ve ever seen. My buddy “Bo” caught the trophy fish of the trip with the largest Kitty Mitchel I’ve seen and followed it up with a 22 LB. Snowy Grouper. The biggest surprise to me was the trolling between spots in deep water was slow. I figured as hot as the way out had been it would be excellent off shore. One small Wahoo was landed and a large one I’d estimate at 50 plus got away right at the boat. (Tip: if you hook a game fish like a Wahoo keep in mind that just because they are close to the boat doesn’t mean there isn’t some fight left in them. Wahoo will often swim right at you and then when they see the boat make a hard dash. If your drag is not right they will pop your line.) Best news from the trip is the rumor that Gags and American Red Snapper are in short supply seem to be a bit off.
See you out there!
John Martin
