Triggers, Mahi, And Coming Soon - Snappers!

The best news on the Gulf fishing scene is the that the triggers have started to move in.

After a a summer of having to catch ten to keep one of legal size, it's nice to be finding quite a few bigger ones and coming in with a nice mess of what I consider to be one of the best eating fish there is.

These folks had a blast catching Mackerel and Triggers. Yep, the kids out-fished the parents !

While I ran quite a few trips this past week I had a pretty day open so I got to go fishing myself. Not only did I put some triggers in the freezer and on the table, I also checked out a few of my "run overs" . I am proud to say that several of 'em were packin' some fine Red Snapper. Less than a week and we can keep a few again !

It's not often I get to catch a good one myself !

The kings are still thin but there have been several days where the big spanish have taken thier place. There is lots of bait around so I'm not sure why the Kings are so spotty. The water is still 84 degrees so it may have to drop another couple degrees before they get thick out front.

It may have taken all summer but I finally had one good thing happen from the BP oil debacle. I had a couple on a 4 hour and told 'em it was time to go in.

We had a great catch of triggers and such, and time was about up. It was a beautiful calm day and they asked if we could fish another 2 hours. "Sure", I'm all over staying out and decided to run several miles further offshore and chase groupers.

We hadn't been on a plane 10 minutes when I noticed something bright yellow appearing and dissapearing a couple miles off our side. It looked like it may be a kayak and i was concerned about it being 7 miles out so we ran over to investigate.

It turned out to be a piece of lost oil containment boom with the submerged portion covered in algae and barnacles. There were also hundreds of Mahi splashing and jumping all around the thing. After quickly rigging up a couple spinning rods my two anglers got to experience one of those couple times a year Dolphin rally extravaganzas.

I got on the radio and called a couple other boats that were out to our location. My folks limited out, messed with the triple tails that were hanging under the boom and then we got to watch another group have as much fun as they just did. Even better was they went on to catch a couple groupers ! The only bad spot was me cleaning fish for an hour and a half !

More in the cooler than on the board !

Starting Friday everybody should have some great boxes of fish-- at least on the weekends when snappers are legal!