Today my fishing buddies were Clayton Hooks who lives and works in Orlando and Justin and Stephen Adams down on vacation from Mississippi. Justin had never been deep sea fishing so it was important that we get him into some action and also get some fish for the table.
First thing as usual was to procure some bait for slow trolling so we ran down the beach and found a school of pogies in 28' of water off of Lorie Wilson park. After one toss of the net the live well was loaded and we were on our way.
8A has been pretty consistent with the kings and the cobia in recent weeks and for a half day trip it's the closest place to the port where you can go that will put you into a position to catch some quality pelagic fish.
The weather was overcast and drizzling rain early but ended up beautiful and the fish were cooperative. We did get on cobia up to the boat but he was obviously too small to keep and got off when the rig got the landing net all tangled up. After we got our limit of kingfish we ran to another location to see if we could find a legal cobia but all we could manage were three Altlantic Sharpnose sharks which are real hard on knives but, pretty tasty when properly prepared.
One of the kingfish we caught today had obviously had an encounter with a fisherman in the past and it was probably commercial hard gear that he had run into. His lower jaw had a compound fracture and no teeth on one side but somehow he was able to survive until today. From the condition of the fishes jaw I'm amazed tht he was able to survive this long. Check out the pictures below
It was a great day of fishing with a great bunch of guys and Justin hopefully had a good time on his first his first deep sea fishing experience.
Final tally for the day:
8 Kingfish limit kept for the table
1 Cobia lost at the boat.
3 Sharpnose Sharks kept for the table.
1 Remora released
