Great Fishing Today With Mike In Marathon
Dinner was the sole purpose for this excursion so we loaded the bait well with as much live bait as possible and ventured into the Gulf. Mike from New Jersey is a repeat customer of mine and loves low stress fishing. He’s not into all the really technical sight fishing. He’d much rather hit the reefs or wrecks so there’s tons of action and a wide range of species. We were able to catch some monster Mangrove Snappers as well as a couple nice Gag Groupers. But unfortunately Grouper season is closed so they were released to fight another day.
Here’s Mike admiring one of his nice Snappers he caught today. We were using light tackle spinning rods loaded with 20 lb. Sufix Performance Braid fishing line. I chose to use 6 feet of 30 lb. Sufix Invisiline Fluorocarbon because the water was very clear. For hooks we were using a custom chartreuse colored jig head made locally here in the Florida Keys. We were using live Pinfish, Pilchards, and Shrimp for bait. The Snappers today really didn’t have a preference from one bait to another. They were really hungry today.
Here’s something funny that happened today. Somehow we were able to catch two legal sized fish on a single hook. The fish on the left seemed to just be hanging on to the fishing line. As soon as I snapped the photo both of them fell off the hook. It really was a sight to see and Mike and I had a good laugh because of it. We both agreed that we’ve seen really tough days where we couldn’t get fish to eat the most perfect live bait. And today these fish seemed to just want to jump into the boat. Thanks Mike for another great day together!