Summer Trips:
April - August Charters:
I have fallen behind on keeping up on the blogs and my only excuse is that I have been extremely busy running charters almost everyday this summer. I have had a lot of doubles and the last thing I want to do after being out in the sun for 10 to 12 hours is come home and stare at a screen. With slow season hitting, it is time to catch back up on the fishing blogs.
This summer has been a pretty darn good summer of running fishing charters. I have started to run near shore trips when weather permits. This means we are able to get up to nine miles out doing some hard bottom fishing. hard bottom fishing is when you are looking for hard bottom not sandy bottom. hard bottom is rocks, ledges, reefs, and anything that the fish can hide and find structure. While fishing out near shore on the hard bottom, I also send out a free line with a live bait on it. this attracts big grouper, mackerel, jacks, and sharks. Hard bottom fishing consists of looking for Snapper, Hogfish, Grouper, Trigger Fish, and many other species.
The inshore/flats fishing has also been heating up as the summer is coming to an end. The beginning of summer the Reds, and Snook were tough to find, as summer progressed we started to get on them.
When you are able to get both out in the Gulf and flats fish, this allows you to catch a variety of fish. When out in the Gulf fishing hard bottom, it has been the summer of Hogs. We have been finding Hogfish about every other week and this is one of my favorite fish to eat. On longer trips I have been starting out near shore in the Gulf and then at the end of the fishing charter, we have been coming in and flats fishing. The Reds and Snook have been all sizes and this is still me favorite type of fishing. Flats fishing is a lot harder and you really need to hunt down the fish, it is nothing like just going out and dropping bait down and reeling something up. Flats fishing will always have my heart, because there is nothing better than reeling in the 30 plus in Red Drum or Snook.
