This past weekend’s deep water trip was very exciting for both the crew and our fishermen. The weather on Friday night and Saturday morning was very nautical.  We were on the backside of a cold front and the wind was humming at around 25 knots.  After a very rough and long 145 nm ride, we made it to the fishing grounds around 8:30 Saturday morning.  The first drop was 565 feet where we were looking for tile fish and queen snapper.  Of course once we started fishing we had rather poor fishing conditions because the wind was running right up against the current.  We caught some nice queen snapper, large porgies and some tile fish that were on the small side – 3 to 5 pounders.  On the second drop, instead of anchoring we decided to drift fish.  This seemed to work a little better for us given the conditions.  We managed to catch a few more queen snapper and tile fish.  The weather started getting much nicer around noon so we decided to push even further offshore to 750 feet in search of snowy grouper and more tile fish.  It took about an hour and a half but once we got there the weather got really nice and the fish got pretty hungry.  We drift fished for the remainder of the afternoon catching nice snowy and yellow edge grouper along with larger tile fish.  At times anglers had triple headers – two snowys and a tile or two tiles and a grouper.  The bite slowed down as the sun started to set.  On the last drift, we got only a couple of grouper.  Our very tired anglers, most of which fished all day at depths up to 800 ft. without the aide of an electric reel -not a single fisherman wimped out and called it quits early – ate their dinner and settled in for the 6.5 hour ride closer to home for some night snapper fishing in shallower water. Captain Jerry forgot to send and email to the snapper that we were going to be there.  When fishing’s slow, it’s Jerry’s fault – when fishing’s good, it’s my fault!  We made several moves until daybreak barely catching any fish.  It was as slow as slow could get.  After daybreak we made a couple more moves which resulted in a few nice scamp grouper, a few bruised egos as the giant amberjack tested the metal of the angler and one really nice true black grouper, caught by Tom Walker.  The next stop, which turned out to be our last stop, gave us pretty good red grouper action with a couple snapper and bunch of porgies mixed in.  Although this wasn’t one of those trips that filled every fish box, we did manage to catch a lot of nice quality deep water fish.  At the same time, we crossed a new threshold – drift fishing depths up to 800 ft. with 12 anglers.  The jackpot winners were Tom Walker – largest grouper, Lee Deaderick – with the largest snapper and Michael Boyle with the only landed amberjack.  Here are some pix from the trip.

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