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Report for Destin, Florida - Nearshore
Capt. Larry Pentel
January 13, 2005
Destin - Saltwater Fishing Report
The middle of January and it's been in the 70's for over a week. Boy I love living in Florida!! The warm weather had a fairly constant SE breeze blowin' for a while that kept just a little too much surf up for me to want to launch. That changed the end of last week and I got a couple of trips in.
Sunday I ran 3 locals who are all experienced and have thier own boats but had empty freezers. We went out on "operation triggerfish" with great success. Since they didn't need much help I actually got to fish some and had a great time myself. Our final tally was 70 head of triggers and 9 groupers. Plenty of fish still around up inshore. In fact, we found more fish in about 5-6 miles than offshore. The big news is the water temps. The beach water temperature is 62- not bad for this time of year. At about 4 miles the surface water goes all the way to 68 degrees !! We ran out about 16 miles and found it fairly constant. One fellow wanted to climb up top and look for cobia when we ran back in. 68 is usually the "majic number" in the spring for the big run.
Tuesday I went out and built a snapper condo with a friend and we fished a couple hours ourselves. We had 16 trigs and 7 groupers- 3 of 'em right nice. I had a joe bouncer grouper that actually had me upset. I hooked 'em up, did the tug of war for a while and he got me in the bottom. Not uncommon but since this wasn't a charter and I had all the time in the world I waited him out and worked on him. After about 10 minutes or so I got him out and comin'- back to the tug o war, boat in gear and driving away from the wreck. The fish is 3/4's of the way up and the hook pulls!!!! Definately a big 'un. God just didn't want him to die. I know where he lives though and plan on checkin' in again soon---
No charters doesn't mean I'm sleepin' in and drinking beer all afternoon. I've torn down all the tackle, put new gears in some, new line on all and fixed the little things on the boat. Did that over a month ago. I've gone and bought another boat ( okay I'm not bright). This ones a little big to beach launch. I've put new motors, all new wiring,hoses, electronics etc on a 28 ft cat. Fired up the motors for the first time yesterday and they sound good. I've got about another 3 weeks of mainly cosmetic work and should have her going by the end of Feb.
I plan on still running the "Dead Fish" off Grayton as much as possible. But on those days when there is just too much swell to beach launch but it's still pretty I'll take this one out the Pass at Destin or Panama. And on the days when it's not really pretty we can still fish as this boats got a large covered helm area with curtains ( dry in the rain), a cabin with a potty (for the gals) and a radar to watch for squalls. Plus, for those of you that just HAVE to run way out there to never never land - I can do that!
Go start shopping for polarized glasses- cobia season's comin' soon (new boats got a tower too).
Capt. Larry Pentel
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