Fishing on the 4th...

[bassfisher02]

Well went out on the Gulf today in hopes of good fishing, we got on the water around 6AM, and started fishing around 6:30AM.. weather reports reported calm winds, yet we were getting gusts at 10mph easily. The seas got choppy quick and made the fishing a tad bit difficult... we opted to stay near the shore, fishing shallow flats. Started off catching a really small sea bass and 3 lizard fish no more than 30 minutes into fishing, and that was it for a good 2 hours for me... my stepdad caught the occasional catfish every now and then, and a short... it was a slow day. Around 9:30AM while fishing a flat the Game warden pulls up on us, just hoping he could write us a ticket... yet we had everything so no tickets today the wind was still gusting, around 11AM, and still no fish worthy of keeping, my stepdad caught 2 small sharks, and some more catfish, and i had still yet to catch anyhting else. Around 1:30PM we decided to give it another 30 minutes, after my stepdad had caught a small cobia... i followed with a Ramora[sp?] the suckerfish. Then after catching yet another small sea bass and lizard fish, i landed the first and only fish worthy of the cooler for the day... a 4lb [give or take] Sheepshead.. it gave me a good fight and we decided to end the day on that. We headed back to the landing and being it 4th of July and the fact scallop season is in the landing was packed. There were 4 boats filled with scallopers making things difficult, and while waiting for the truck to be backed in one of the scallopers almost ramed into our boat trying to load his... i swear you'd think it was there first time loading a boat. Another guy about ruined his prop trying to power load his boat, i guess he forgot to raise his motor anyways we got outta there with no scratches on the boat and only one fish in the cooler. Nonetheless it was good fishing, and only 2 more days till im out there again



Sorry if the image is a tad bite large...

[ROBZILLA]

Interesting fish we don't have them up here.They fight well?what did you catch it on?

[bassfisher02]

Yeah they are troopers, he was ripping off drag and i had it set pretty tight. They dont get too much longer than that, but they start to get real stocky and heavy. I caught it on a jigged red/white grub.. in a shallow flat around some rocks. they have extremely tough skin on them, it took some concentration and some time to fillet it, even with an electric fillet knife haha. Their teeth are really weird though, they have a top and bottom row of teeth and they look just like human teeth, they are sqaure instead of sharp like a lot of saltwater fish.

[Christopherkeene9]

JB, they'll steal your bait before you even put the hook in the water too!

Nice catch. Didn't get to go fishin yesterday since we got out of the inlet and Capt. didn't want to duke out the 4-5ft. slop for over an hour each way.

Christopher

P.S in case you didn't know Sea Bass are 12"TL now instead of 10".

[bassfisher02]

Chris - Is that right? Hm a couple weekends ago i caught a sea bass that was 10" maybe 11" and we kept him, since at the time we thought it was still at 10" and the fact we never get any that even make it close to that. Usually we catch 4"-5" range, we dont go deep enough to catch any of size.

Sucks about not getting to fish, but i can understand i hate when the seas get choppy. I think if the weather reports had reported 10mph winds we wouldnt have gone out.