Even More Fish to Fry in SoWal

May 7th was the opening day of Red snapper season in Florida state waters and that has given us yet another species to be able to target again. Open only on weekends till the 28th but it sure is nice to get to change up my fishing styles from day to day.

The Kings have come back, still plenty of Vermillions around, Triggers, LOTS of short Amberjacks with just a few keepers mixed in, Cobia still showing up pretty regular and we found some Tuna and Mahi this past week too.

After not seeing any for most of the year everyone seemed to catch a a nice gag Grouper or two the past few days also. They open up June 1st. The only tough thing about this time of the year is trying to decide what to chase on my 3 and 4 hr trips!

Lots of great pics and catches since my last report and I wish I could include more folks. Here are a few of the most memorable ones (for me any way!) As always I ran a quick "first limit of Red Snapper over the rail" trip at daylight on opening day with my son and some friends before my charters.

That's local favorite musicians Dread Clampitt with the 1st Red Snapper off the beach in 2016.

The 1st charter catch with not only a limit of Red Snappers but Triggers too!

Another Snapper limit with lots of other critters to go along.

There's some BIG Red Snappers on that board!

Some of my long time hard core regulars on a day when Reds were closed.. with an incredible 4 hr catch that included 2 keeper AmberJacks, Kings, Vermillions and a Cobia!

My "that's my 1st ever (insert fish here)" new regular angler with his 1st Red Grouper. He seems to catch a (big) 1st ever fish every trip. I wanna charter somebody else and go marlin fishing with him.

The rest of his gang with some fine Red snappers.

This 2 man crew had a 3 hr. afternoon trip that turned into steady excitement, we got the Kings 1st, then the 2 Tunas and barely had time to go catch the Red Snapper limit ( it was saturday). Not often you can catch that fine a Tuna off the beach let alone 2.... my folks gave me some tuna and we had some fine sashimi that night.

Yesterday was my birthday so I took the family out for a quick 2 hr trip after my morning charter. Everybody got to catch a good fish and I even got the biggest Red Snapper. Looks to be another great summer of fishing here at Grayton with all the pelagics showing up along with the bottom fish. I still have a few openings the last week of May, the last half of July and 1st of August here. I'm off to Indian pass the 7th of August for the rest of the month to chase Tarpons and Tripletails. If you want to experience "Old Florida" before it completely dissapears and maybe catch the fish of a lifetime too give me a call to book a date for fishing at the 'pass in August.