Captain Mitch reports good fishing on Wednesday’s 12 Grouper trip. The first stop yielded about 8 keeper grouper up to about 8 lbs. They managed to catch keeper grouper on almost every stop of the day. Mixed in were also a lot of grunts and a good amount of undersized grouper that were released unharmed. At the end of the day the average was 1.5 keeper grouper per person, considering there were anglers that did not catch any keepers, Captain Mitch and I feel that is excellent fishing.
It has been brought to my attention that on this trip there were some anglers who were unaware of the required use of non-stainless steel circle hooks in the Gulf of Mexico. This rule has been in place since June 1st 2008 as published by the National Marine Fisheries Service. Although I feel it is not our obligation nor have we been trained by National Marine Fisheries federal agents to enforce the use of circle hooks, I feel it is our obligation to provide our customers with legal circle hooks. The Gulfstar purchases tens of thousands of legal circle hooks every year and has them available on every trip. If you do not have them in your tackle box, please ask the crew for them as they included in the fare on all Gulfstar trips.