Great fishing for amberjack!!
Capt. Rich Antonino
March 17, 2009
St. Petersburg - Saltwater Fishing Report
Fishing on someone else's boat as a customer! What a blast from my perspective. It's good for me to see fishing from the customer's view every once in a while. Matt was with me as was my cousin Jim, from Netwise Technologies. He's hosted my website forever and has helped me keep it going. If you have any computer questions or projects, give him a call at (866) 474-0922. Netwise Technologies website.
Where did we fish? Florida, St. Petersburg (Fort DeSoto Park) to be exact. Well, we left from there. We fished with Randy Rochelle with Islander Charters. Islander Charters website. Capt. Randy did a great job and hit boat was a blast. A 28' catamaran that flew and took the waves great.
We fished for bottom fish out 25-40+ miles offshore. We missed grouper season by a day, which was a bummer because we nailed tons of red and gag grouper. We also slammed the American Red Snapper, which also had to go back. We did manage some really nice amberjack, which Matt and I thoroughly enjoyed catching on spining gear. We jigged them up with long jigs---I wanted to beat up my new Okuma gear to see if it was up to the challenge and it was. Our largest fish was about 25 pounds, and the new 7' Okuma Cedros jigging/spinning rod was perfect for this. I loved using the Salina 80 Baitfeeder rod for the jigging and bottom fishing. We bottom fished in 100-170' of water and the baitfeeder lever made holding bottom a breeze.
Once again, the drags worked great in this reel. I can't wait for our season up here. You're going to see a lot more of these reels on boats up here in 2009 I think. I've been getting requests and calls about these reels all winter.
There's something about Florida fishing that I love. In two days of fishing, we caught 20 species of fish. You never know what you're going to catch. Randy and his mate, Josh, did a great job keeping us on fish all day. There were no slow times during the day. Randy and his charter business there are Field Testers for Okuma as well and we saw some glimpses of reels that will be available soon. Very, very nice ones. We caught plenty of live bait as we left the pass and it lasted us all day. We caught one big octopus, which was cool. I'll be back next winter!! Until then, think about fishing up here! 2009 rates on the Black Rose. I made up a few more batches of TunaCandy for the spring striper run and June Tuna fishing...Give me a call and I'll custom pour some for you!
See you out there soon! Keep having fun out there, whereever you are. Capt. Rich Antonino, 508-269-1882
Target Species:
amberjack, snapper
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