Yet again the best action we are seeing is out deep! We have another week of red snapper fishing ahead before they are closed for the year, unless an extension gets announced. Due to this, we are still fishing around 150-200ft of water or more nearly all the time on our 12 hour extreme trips, 39 hour long range overnight trips and our long range private fishing charters aboard the Flying HUB 1 and Flying HUB 2. This week we have nailed some truly trophy fish like a nearly 44lb gag grouper and a beautiful sailfish we caught and released and a handful of nearly 20lb red snapper too. The big mangrove snapper have been biting well but they are a little hit and miss right now, depending on if the weather allows us the opportunities to dial in on the mangroves. If its not the current holding us back its been stormy, rainy and windy weather holding us back from getting the mangrove bite fired up. However, early this week on the Sunday 39 hour private charter they had the great weather we needed and some very experienced anglers on board and they brought home a mess of nice mangrove snapper in the 7,8 and even 9lb range with the jackpot mangrove nearly 10lbs.
The sailfish we caught and released was caught by accident really aboard a Flying HUB 1 private fishing charter by Capt Joe Drew. He was dropping down a threadfin while targeting fat red grouper and red snapper around 170ish foot of water and as soon as it hit bottom on his first stop of the trip he thought he’d hooked a big grouper since it was taking a run for the bottom and he was using big grouper tackle so he put the heat on the fish cranking like a mad man and lifting as hard as he could. Once he got the fish off the bottom he thought he had a 20+lb red grouper coming up when all of a sudden it took off on a huge run. Then on the other side of the boat a guest yells ‘sailfish’ as we could see it tail walking on the surface 50-60yards from the boat. He quickly moved to the opposite side of the boat under the anchor line and realized he had hooked a beautiful fish instead of what he now thought was a big bonita. Once he got clear of the anchor line the line was slack and for a second he thought he had lost the fish due to a spit hook.
Luckily, he didn’t give up reeling in the slack as quickly as his big 9ot would go and all of a sudden as the line came back tight the fish appeared at the side of the boat almost to say ‘he you win, lets end this early and get me back in the water.’ They were able to hoist him into the boat for a quick photo and hook release and get him back in the water expeditiously. Since it was such a very quick fight and expert hook release while taking a photo that fish swam off very strong and even did a few free jumps as if to say ‘thanks for getting be back quickly’ before disappearing out to the west. The nearly 44lb gag was 43lbs and change caught on the 39 hour long range overnight trip early this week. The gag bite prior to the full moon mid July was very good and then it slacked off a bit around the moon and now it seems to be heating back up for us out deep closer to the 200ft mark. This huge gag was one of many caught aboard this particular 39 hour fishing trip. Andrew Campos was the skilled and very lucky angler to boat this monster gag grouper using a slow pitch jig on a crazy ultra light jigging rod with only 30lb test and a very small sized reel! Crazy catch for sure on such a unique set up but that’s what these jig fisherman use to land some truly awe-inspiring catches and as the slow pitch jigging scene continues to grow after stories like this we continue to see more and more epic fish caught on some tackle that looks like it couldn’t handle a 10lb bass at your local golf course pond.
