Report for Destin, Florida - Nearshore

Capt. Larry Pentel
June 11, 2005
Destin - Saltwater Fishing Report

What a weather day! Tropical storm Arlene is blowin' and crashin' outside with a 3 ft storm surge and 16' seas. I 've spent most of the day on the beach watching the Gulf trying to over run the shore. Love to watch a storm as long as it stays below "run for the hills" level. In a perfect world this storm will push a lot of fish in to make life easy but not move any of the wrecks around ( that we've just found again since Ivan)and make life difficult.

Fishings been good the past week with mixed bag catches of assorted species. Tuesday we had 10 Red Snapper, 2 Black Grouper a Red Grouper some trigs and vermillions along with 3 kings on a 4 hour. The big thing was the Kings- 2 of 'em were right at 30#! They made fine bookends on the rack for pictures. Wed. had 15 fine Red Snappers along with 2 Black groupers. Thursday was a kids day- 3 kids fishin' 2 hook gear most of the day so we had a cooler fuuull of trigs and vermillions along with 9 red snappers and a couple good grouper. The last stop I gave the kids slip lead rigs and let em go for the gusto. The littlest girl landed a fine Black grouper we got to keep and the other 2 caught a few shorts. Dad had caught a a bigger Black already so there were no hurt feelings with the grownups.

The best surprise of the week was caught on yesterdays trip. The forecast was for rapidly deteriorating weather with the tropical storm coming so I told my folks we'd stay close at first and try for kings. I put a live bait out and started to drag around a big bait school and had a king skyrocket our wiggler within 2 minutes. How this fish had lived long enough to grow to 10# I don't know 'cause he jumped 7 more times at the bait before he connected!!!

Much hootin' and hollerin' every jump and lots cheering when we finally hooked up. Got that fish under control and another bait out. Fish on almost immediately! Big hole in the water and strong run and then airborne-- Sailfish!!!! A fine one!!! 12 great completely out of the water jumps and then the big runs. After about 15 minutes he's back to crashing only now its the head and bill out side shakes. The fish put on a great show till I was able to wire 'em up grab his bill and lift him out for pictures. I estimated him at 50# (my folks said 60#). Since we released him and he swam away none the worse for wear I'm sure he'll grow bigger. By the time my folks get back to Tennessee he may be 100#!!! The weather drove us in a hour early but even with just 3 hours we had 4 nice kings , 2 snappers and pictures of a stick fish worth framing.

With that thought in mind more big news! Capt Tim Harvey from over at the "Pass" called me tuesday to report he had jumped the first Tarpon of the year!! Said he had a shark trip out on the (new and improved) "Tall Tales" and was drifting thru a school of bait 3 miles offshore when the big 'poon started jumping. They got 8 jumps before he threw the hook but got they the best part without the work ! Tim said he saw a dozen more Tarpon that day. I'm fired up to go over to Indian Pass the end of the month for the summer and chase the big silver kings.

Cobias- Snappers- Groupers- Kings- Sails- Tarpon-Tripletails- Redfish- So many fish and so little time to chase 'em all!!!! I'm tryin' as hard as I can but I still run out of days every year!

Capt. Larry Pentel

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