Fishing Report - St. Petersburg - was supposed to be a jigging trip....

[DoubleA_FL]

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(also posted in Jigging Forum)

So me and two buddies head out of St Petersburg with the plan to go tear up the grouper and snapper and king fish on the Middle Grounds.



I had found a weather bouy not on any maps holding TONS of cigar minnows so we head there. about a 50mi run thats sort of on the way. after the third Sabiki rig cut off by small sharks we gave up and headed due West to the middle grounds.

On the way out i spotted a white spot on the horrizon, as we got closer the spot got bigger, a lot bigger. Turns out it was the roof of a commercial fishing boat that had sank or been scuttled. to my delight all i could see in the water was Dolphin. I have never seen so many dolphin. So i grabbed my two light jigging rods, and my one inshore rod, put top water tackle on em and sent it out.


the picture doesnt really get the size across, its about 20-25ft long and about 15' wide. AWESOME!

First thing in the water was a Sebile 114mm Stick Shad. two twitches, Dolphin on. There were some GOOD sized bulls runnin with them but we couldnt coax them into the boat. i think the average size we caught was around 24-26 inches. But we had a lot of fun, light tackle can make any catch fun.


my friend sean on my inshore rod.




i couldnt fit em in but there were two other rods in rod holders with dolphin on.

after almost limiting on dolphin we made the run to the middle grounds and finished up with two nice red grouper and a monster snapper. due to time constraints i didnt want to waste time driving around trying to find good structure for jigging so we threw live bait and got a couple fish in the boat before having to turn around and head home.


snapper!


im just happy we got him in the boat - nice lip piercing.

were out sunrise to sunset and had a surprising and fun day. Even though the only reason i wanted to go out was jigging it was fun to find Dolphin and fish topwater.


just skimmin along the pond...


that isolated thunderstorm they forecasted, god bless radar


the sky as we docked

tight lines
aaron

[Fishin-N-Wishin]

Very nice! The seas looked so nice! It makes me wish I had my 3 12's a week job to go out anytime time during the week to enjoy days like that. Now it's M-F 9-5

I've had aspirations of my own to test my Pursuit out to the middle grounds but haven't grown a decent "set" yet to test my twin Yami 200's that far out. I have but a few MG #'s and those are off the maps!

Anyway, looks like a great trip Double and way to find the floater holding some schoolies!

[DoubleA_FL]

yea, FnW, Pursuit is a great boat and so long as you have twins you should be fine in fair weather to run to the grounds.

You dont really need specific numbers, if you look at a decent chart of the MG and get a general idea and then just run out there and drive around you will find bottom structure. I generally troll for Kings while looking for structure and that way you catch a few kings while you are looking around.

If you want i will PM you next time i make a trip out there with my friends and we can run out together. Two boats is better than one.

Its always a good time!

Tight Lines,
Aaron