Back to Grayton Fishing

Made it back from the 'Pass to Grayton/Seagrove yesterday afternoon and should have all the tackle and gear swapped over to start beach launch fishing again tomorrow. I wish I had lots of great Tarpon stories but since my last report we had pretty much nothing but rain. All that fresh water coming down the rivers and into the bay pretty much moved the Tarpons around the Cape and into saltier water. I did get a couple half day trips in where we did real good with the Triple Tails tho....

We got all these but 1 in an hour and a half of Triple tail hunting under really cloudy skies, got the last one in 2 1/2 hrs of Tarpon hunting where we only saw 1 Silver King but lots of rain on the way in.

We started out looking for tarpon but after they were a no show we changed gears and chased the 'Tails, that bigger fish was 12#. Once again, the rain had us in before noon....

The past week has been beautiful..sunny and not near as hot. All my kids came over to the 'Pass and we had a great weekend of Scalloping in St . Joe Bay. While the water is stained some from the rain it is still pretty clear there. Once all this fresh water runs out there should still be a few weeks of good Tarpon fishing left between the Capes. It will take at least another week before that happens though I'm afraid.

The other Grayton Captains I spoke with said fishing has been good here. Capt Phil said he had 4 Kings, 5 Triggers, a Grouper and 25 Pinks on yesterdays mornings 4 hr trip. Sounds like my kind of fishing! While it's always exciting to launch those silver giants all that fresh water has me ready to get back off the beach here.

For all those counting on a fall Red Snapper season.. stand by. The anti Fishing Roy Crabtree ( whose unequal enforcement of Red Snapper laws was shut down by a Fed. Judge this summer) announced yesterday that the NEW METHODOLOGY used to count snapper catch this summer showed a large over run on the quota and he didn't see where there could be a Fall season... of course it also showed WAY different numbers than all the counts for the last 10 years since the way they counted was so different...... Give me a stack of legal pads, a pile of #2 pencils, a new computer and 10 college students and I'll prove to you that Rhode Island is bigger than Texas. 
It would be so nice if the US Fisheries were actually managed by science rather than politics. With the current setup of NOAA that just doesn't seem possible anymore. Wasn't it just 2 months ago that the Feds OWN Scientists said there were way more Snapper in the Gulf than they thought ? They also said the quota could be doubled without causing overfishing and recommended a 30 day Fall season as I recall.....