Finally A Fishing Reprt! MHC 1/16

[Ponce]

First I have to say that it is nice to finally be able to post a fishing report again. Our last trip out to the get blue ocean had been November 7th which is way too long between trips in my book. Like many other guys I started seeing an opening in the forecast for this weekend and kept my fingers crossed that it would actually hold until the weekend. About mid-week it looked like it would hold so I called Jim (Sea Draggin) to see if he could get down for some jigging and he was in. I also got my 2 main fishing buddies from work Doug and Mike and we had a crew. Plan was head out bright and early and primarily jig AJ’s with the hope of maybe pulling a Cobia or African Pompano for some meat in the box. We figured we would mix in a little high speed trolling between spots as well.

Okay on to the report. Met at the ramp at 0530 and headed out to flat calm water the whole way out first stop was about 40 miles in about 25 fathoms. We were pretty steady on the AJ’s and Almaco Jacks nothing really big I think the biggest was about 50 lbs. We moved a few miles further out that I have pretty good luck on the depth here was right at 30 fathoms. We got into some better quality AJ’s here. Then the dreaded happened Jim, Doug and Mike all hooked up within about 30 seconds of each other. Doug and Jim both boat the elusive and endangered Gag Grouper and Mike pulls in about a 50 lbs. AJ. Unfortunately, the Gags where Jim and Doug’s personal best at 15 and 20 lbs. We did our best to get them back down safely, I have a heavy weight with gaff type hook to send them down but they were too big and we had to decompress them and send them down with the weight. After that we decided to move, no sense in catching and hurting Gags when we couldn’t keep them.

We decided to head closure in and put some BSB in the box for dinner. I wanted to try my new Eastern Tackle Aki Angler (the Squid looking Jig) first drop what do I pull up another keeper endangered Gag, so we sent him back down to his home as well. We did catch a mess of BSB and headed home on the same flat water that we came out on.

I fished my new jig set-up (that I got before Thanksgiving) for the first time it is a JPR custom rod (200g Riley blank) spiral wrapped matched with a Saltiga 30T. I will say that I’m very happy and it performed great from BSB to I think the biggest AJ I caught was about 40lbs.

Here are a couple of shots of my new set-up and how it loads with an AJ on the other end.





We fished Eastern Tackle jigs primarily, the AJs came on a little bit of everything and as usual 90% of my fish came on the Pot Roast Katana in both the 160 and 240g. The 2 big gags came on a hammered First Drop and a hammered Flat Side I can’t remember the weight and my Gag came on the Pot Roast Aki Angler 250g. The BSB came on a variety of 100g jigs.

Final haul for the day was about 25-30 AJs, 40-50 BSB (we only kept about a dozen), and 3 endangered Gags. It was a great day on the water with friends and it sure was nice to get out after so long. I know we did well because, as I type this my arm is just a little on the sore side.

I didn’t get many pictures hopefully I can get some from Doug and Jim can add a few of his to the report.
This report is double posted in the jigging form and W2MW.


Picture Added.

[paul708]

Sweet.

Ponce, nice work.
thanks for the report.
good to see you getting out.