Merry Fishmas SoWal

I know, I know, it's been over 2 weeks since I sat down and wrote a fishin' report. To be honest I really didn't get out on the water much before Christmas. The weather wasn't really that great and I didn't have many trips booked.

As usual, I got booked solid from right before Christmas till New Year and the weather is making it tough to get many of those trips in. I launched the boat this morning with a forecast of "calm this AM , getting rough and rainy in the afternoon".

The prognosticator was off by about 6 hours 'cause after going about a mile offshore to catch bait at 7 AM, I called my anglers and told 'em we should cancel 'cause it was rough, and blowy and just going to get worse. Always better to be on the hill wishin' you were fishing than offshore wishin' you were on the hill!. The forecast for the next few days doesn't look real good either...

Yesterday afternoon on the other hand was beautiful. I took my 3 anglers out and they had a wonderful time. Cool temps but calm seas and a great bite. My folks landed 15 (yep fifteen) fine gags, as well as a bunch of Red Snappers that we released. We 2 hook fished enough to get a bunch of freezer fish but they were more interested in "Glory fish". For a 4 hour trip we burned up a bunch of memory on the cameras with pics of big fish being held up.

He had the hot hook for an hour; every drop had a big bite...
 

This young Lady was so proud of this Grouper, but she had to take a break and catch her breath for a while after..

This gal is a local and loves to fish; she stayed excited the whole trip!
 

Some of the "smaller" fish we got to keep

The Sunday before Christmas was another one of those calm, pretty winter days and my anglers took advantage of the conditions by filling up the box. We started out Flounder fishing and they landed 22 in about an hour. Then 3 miles out to bottom fish. We found a couple schools of Jacks and got our limit of them, and then went on to catch a pile of Vermillions, a couple of Triggers and a few Pinks as well. I think I cleaned fish for 2 hours!

Plenty of fine Snapper around too!
 

And some BIG Sharks as well!
 

A great board but even more fish still in the box!

Back up inshore, the Trout and Redfish reports have been really good. I got tired of hearing about everybody else catching fish the week before Christmas, so my son and I took his boat up the river for a couple hours one afternoon to play some. While we didn't find many Trout to keep, we found some of the typical winter "throwbacks" and a great school of Reds. The Reds were all slot fish except for one that was probably over. We kept our 4 and came in happy to get to fish ourselves for a change. 

Proof that the Capt. can fish too.

I have trips booked the next 3 days, but as I said, the weather looks iffy. We are going over to Indian Pass for New Years Eve and a couple days vacation after. As soon as I get back, I am going to shut everything else down and just work on getting the new boat ( yeah!) put together. I probably won't have another fishing report up for 3 weeks or so, but I'll try to get some new shiny boat photos posted when it's ready to go!

Happy New Year!!!