Warm Winter Days
Capt. Larry Pentel
January 20, 2010
Destin - Saltwater Fishing Report
They may have been few and far between so far this year but we are finally having some of those warm winter days that make living here so wonderful. Yesterday was sunny, light winds and a high temp in the mid 60's.
I was fortunate enough to have a couple regulars and 2 of their friends from Atlanta booked for an "arm yankin'" trip on the nicest day of the year so far. We launched about 8:30, made a couple stops to fill the live well with ruby lips, pinks and rockfish and then blasted across a slick gulf to almost 20 miles offshore. I pulled up to a big steel wreck and all my anglers dropped down after the quick "this is how to do it " speech by yours truly. All 4 rods loaded up pretty quick and the games were on ! As happens regularly the jacks all ended up wining the first round with 2 broken lines and 2 pulled off fish. Okay- a little more "this is how to do it" from the captain (always easy when you just have to talk and don't have to actually try to land a reef donkey !) and we shoot at 'em again. Much better this round with 1 nice fish about 25# going in the box and 3 "almost had em's". We stayed on the spot for about an hour and a half landing 12 to 15 fish ( I lost count 'tween tying hooks and leaders) in the 20 to 30# range. We had several on that acted much bigger but managed to make it to the wreck to cut off the mono. We kept our 4 fish limit and released the rest to fight again another day.
A Big Jack will Give You All You Can Handle!
We fished our way back in and managed to box a nice grouper and a good mess of triggers. The cold water seems to have moved the Red Snappers out from where they have been stacked for the past year. We only caught 3 in the 10 to 15# this trip.
Another of those "extinct" critters
You can't find a spot that doesn't have 'em on it!
Just a note to all the folks with thier own boats that want to get a big tug. While all this sounds easy you have to pay attention to details to get a big fish to bite a hook. There was another (private) boat on the wreck with us the whole time we were there. We had at least 1 fish on the entire time and sometimes 4-- I never saw the other folks get a bite. They were right next to us, less than 10 feet away several times (I had to pull away 4 times to keep 'em from crashing into us) and they had both jigs and live bait. A couple quick notes- If what you are doing isn't working-- try something else. If you are fishing a "spot"- wreck, reef, rock, whatever; Stay on the spot ! If you drift around a couple hundred yards away from the spot all you do is scatter out the fish and turn off the bite. Do that over and over again and the school will leave the wreck and find another home! Try to make the bait look like a natural injured fish-- It's not common for a predator to see it's food swimming backwards or sideways at warp speed away from cover-----
Get out there and have a big time on these nice days. We only get so many this time of year so use 'em up!
Capt Larry Pentel
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