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2 DAYS OF TARPON
By blackburnbay, 6/26/09

I just moved over to Jupiter from Sarasota but I have been driving back to the gulf on some of the weekends to fish. Here are a bunch of photos and video from Sunday around Sarasota. The big tarpon pictures are from Sunday and the little guys were from a day 2 weekends ago. The tarpon were eating so good that we were able to put my friend's 11 year old little brother on a couple fish. Good times! >>Forum Thread & More Photos

FULL MOON SNAPPER
By Dennco2000, 6/20/09

I love night fishing especially when the day time temperatures are approaching the 100 degree mark. So shortly after loading the live well full of pin fish we pointed the boat due west and enjoyed a few well deserved beers until the depth finder read 105 feet. It was well after dark by the time we dropped the first baits down as air cooled the bite became hot! We were using 10 feet of Yo-zuri fluorocarbon leader and a #1 to 1/0 hook. The sardine heads seem to be doing the trick and the moon was so bright we barely needed to use our new LED spreader lights. We fished into the next day only stopping for a cat nap and a quick bite to eat. We topped off the trip with a couple of select size amberjack and a gag grouper, along with our limit of snapper. >>Forum Thread & More Photos

OFFSHORE WITH MY SON
By JDBer94, 6/12/09

Matthew & I invited forum members Mr. Demeanor (Chris) and Flatsbroke (Andrew) to join us offshore yesterday. Matt & I had been offshore twice over the past 10 days and this was to be our last trip for a couple of weeks. With the ethanol fuel problem in the Monza solved and the boat full of fuel we headed out Big Pass to our first spot about 46 miles out. We jumped around a bit to find the bite and on our third spot we found the fish. We fished with a variety of dead and live baits to include squid, sardines, white bait, pinfish and Blue Runners and used primarily large spinning gear for the sport of it! As was usual Matthew was killing them and quickly put a couple keeper American Red Snapper in the boat. Chris, not to be out done (it is always a big competition between Matt & Chris for the largest fish in the species) got into the mix and landed a couple very nice American Red Snapper. On this day in terms of Red Snapper it was Chris who got Matt!

Andrew and I also added a couple fish and we soon had our limit of Red Snapper with the sizes ranging from about 17” to 25”. Mixed in with the Red Snapper was a bunch of nice Lane Snapper, which was a pleasant surprise. In the same general area we also boated a good amount of Red Grouper with Matthew getting the two largest Red Grouper (he got Chris!) and Andrew adding a nice Black Grouper. The bite slowed around 11:00 so we decided to head to the closest spring and see what was around, ha! Matthew started deep jigging and got hit almost immediately. After fighting the fish for the first few minutes solo he put the rod in the holder for the assist. What resulted was his second best ever AJ on the deep jig.>>Forum Thread & More Photos

MATTHEW’S RED
By JDBer94, 6/05/09

Forum members Mr. Demeanor (Chris), offthehook! (Jack), my son Matthew and I had been planning an early June trip for about 2 weeks. The goal was to get some American Red Snapper. Like most offshore fisherman we had been catching and releasing them in close for over the past 6 months and it was way past the time to put some in the box!

The weather conditions did not look favorable for a 40 to 45 mile run so we decided to stay in closer with our first stop being around 24 miles out. The bite was a little slow with the southern wind but I managed a 22” Gag and Matthew followed it up with a 27 ½” Red Grouper. With some storms to the far northwest, moving generally northeast, we decided to run northwest and hope they would dissipate before we arrived at our next spot. Once we arrived Jack put us right on the Spring, dropped the Suremarker, set up a drift and had some fun with the Amber Jacks. We put three good eating sized Jacks in the box and quickly headed on.

The next stop, was not productive, in fact it was not even a spot… We quickly moved, anchored up and began to boat keeper size American Red Snapper in around 110 feet of water. I was the first to improve the taste in fish box and then Jack followed up with the largest American Red Snapper of the day. Jack and I followed it up with a couple more and then Matthew got his first official in season legal Red Snapper… another one crossed off the list! >>Forum Thread & More Photos