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Sorry for the late report! We have been really busy working on Gulfstar improvements like replacing the electric anchor system with a hydraulic system, replacing the bunk room cushions with thicker, more comfortable material and because of the new bunk room arrangement on the top deck, a coast guard required stability test that the Gulfstar passed with flying colors! In fact, the test proofed out for 49 passengers and 4 crew members in exposed waters (for us that means out to 200 miles offshore). Of course we don’t fish that many passengers but it shows the inherent stability of the Gulfstar. Now for the fishing report…
The fishing on Pulley Ridge was not really too productive. We fished most of the day Friday in 240 – 300 ft. of water with very little in the box to show for our efforts. Every stop that we made, the fish seemed to have lockjaw so we decided to start moving offshore for a deeper adventure. We stopped at a 300 ft. spring that gave us some big jacks, some big red snapper, and a few decent grouper. Moving on the next stop was a 500 ft. spring which produced some super mega giant jacks, a mess of nice scamp grouper and a bunch of red porgies on steroids. With the sun going down we decided to move further offshore and fish the depth that we had great success at the week earlier. At around midnight we arrived in 850 ft. of water and the bottom machine showed very little fish, however in our past experience this is quite normal. We made a couple test drifts with zero fish coming in the boat. Feeling pretty confident that the fish would show up in the morning, we shut down our engines and let the boat drift aimlessly while the anglers rested up for daybreak. At around 4 am we decided to take of advantage of the rare opportunity that all of our passengers were asleep and explore the area for new bottom. Sunrise, Saturday the bite started off a little slow on the first drift. It got better as the sun got higher and every drift produced more and more. The tile fish, the yellowedge and snowy grouper were waking up. By noon we were dialed in and we were on the good stuff. One of the spots we had found while searching was giving us large grey and golden tile fish, jumbo yellowedge and snowy grouper, barrel fish and queen snapper. We also had a whole bunch of giant mystery fish bites that we couldn’t land. We fished our 12 anglers from sunrise to sunset in 850+ feet of water with 2-3 lb. sinkers without a single one of them backing down from the challenge. Overall we had exceptional deep water fishing along with outstanding weather. I forgot to mention earlier that while we were steaming offshore, we had some good tuna action while trolling.
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