Bottom Machine All Lit Up
Bottom Machine All Lit Up

Wow… What a difference a week makes! This past weekend’s waxing moon fall equinox elbow trip gave us a series of challenges to make the trip somewhat successful. First there were Lots of good fish shows on the bottom machine in the elbow area.  The fish were of the larger size but just not biting too well. We made plenty of moves and worked real hard to make the trip a success. We had amberjack in the 50 pound range yellowtail snappers up to 6 pounds mangrove snapper‘s around 10 pounds some African pompano, lots of Bar Jack’s, a few good size keeper Red grouper and a bunch of Vermillion snapper. We did have a lot of miscellaneous fish as well. The fisherman and women fished virtually every minute of that trip to scrape a trip together.
Everybody was a regular Gulfstar customer with one new angler from Tennessee. In my career I have fished with lots of Good people but this weekend the passengers were the absolute best of the best. No one complained or whined that the fishing wasn’t easy and they took it as a challenge and ran with it to make the best of a slow bite.
At one point on the second evening I seriously considered running up to the middle grounds to see if the bite was any better up there but because of the giant fish shows on virtually every stop and we were picking very nice quality fish I was thinking the fish just had to start biting soon. We decided to stay at the elbow. sundown gave us one good four hour bite and a pic of assorted fish until it was time to terminate the trip.
We did not have as nice a Weather as was forecasted with a few thunderstorms mixed in. The seas were a bit cranky and we were fishing in the wind across tide virtually the whole trip. I don’t think that affected the bite for most of the trip but when we were out in the deeper water looking for large gag grouper I think it made our Bait presentation difficult.
Overall it was a marginally good trip for fishing but an exceptionally great trip to spend time great people who just wanted to be out there having a good time.

Capt. Rich