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Report for Destin, Florida - Nearshore
Capt. Larry Pentel
September 21, 2004
Destin - Saltwater Fishing Report
Ivan has come and gone but left a memory not easily forgotten. We in the Grayton/Seagrove area got off lite. Minimal strutural damage to houses and just a few down trees. The only damage I sustained is dead grass and vegatation from the gulf coming into the yard, my dock is now 2 ft. higher ( it Floated up) and I've got a couple of cracked windows but that was from boarding up! The beach looks way different and most of the dune edge is a cliff again. Probably only a quarter of what Opal handed us. Your basic "shingle" storm
Further West is a different story- Destin harbor lost a LOT of docks and a few boats but still got off fairly well. Navvare got hit hard and Pensacola is in shambles. It pretty much doesn't matter what it is - they don't have it- power, water,food, law and order, it's gone. As is the Navy hospital, the Federal building and anything within a block or 2 of the water downtown. Any boat left floating in the bay is high and dry or buried on the bottom.
On to the reason I'm supposed to write this-FISHING !!
I went Suday and Monday ( yesterday) on "scouting missions" and found about what I had expected. The big rocks up in close have LOTS of Red Snappers on 'em (storm came in from the West)and a few groupers. The fish are still disoriented and aren't holding tight to the spots but with a little bait in the water they find you fast. All the wrecks I looked for up in close were gone. The good news is nothing washed up on the beach( here) so they are still out there, we just have the giant Easter egg hunt trying to find 'em again. It will take a week or two for the fish to regroup on to the smaller spots so it won't be easy to huntin' wrecks for maybe a month. On a more somber note I checked a couple of coral spots up in close- flat rocks with no relief but good coral trees- and the bottom looked like it was graded flat on my machine. I hate to lose those places as they are usually some of the better grouper spots when the fishin' is hard. Yesterday we saw a bunch of schools of ax handle spanish ballin' up the bait about a mile offshore. We also ran into big bull sharks on every spot we stopped that had fish yesterday. They were not around Sunday. Every day will be different for a a couple weeks.
The second sandbar is MIA. Not unusual after a big storm. Good news for the Surf fisherman as the macks and kings will be in easy reach. Quite possibly the cobias will be on the beach come spring as well. Sunday we skipped a big pompano taking the boat out and saw lots of bait (cigs) running in a foot of water. I imagine by the end of the week things will have settled out and there will be a lot of good catches in close.
I did not have time ( or conditions) to go look out a ways. It could be that the deep water stuff is pretty much intact- every storm is different and you just have to deal with it.
In the mean time-- just because the fish are piled up and easy to get doesn't mean the rules have changed. Snappers are 4 per person- if you can get your limit in 15 minutes GREAT- don't keep killin' 'em. Fish for B-liners, troll for mackeral or go look for wrecks. There are NOT any more fish than 2 weeks ago, they are just in a different place and more concentrated. Take advantage of this by fishing bigger baits. Those 4 snappers will be a lot more impressive if they are biguns. Wind the small ones up slowly, handle 'em gently but quickly and let 'em go. If you do accidently kill a fish that's legal go ahead and keep it and let it go toward your limit. Please don't throw a dead fish back to keep a bigger live one. Like I said- same number of fish- and next spring when things are back to normal your gonna be happy to find a few.
Capt. Larry Pentel
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