:thumbsup:

Double 6 hours today on the Bollweevil.

The afternoon trip.

I never thought Id say this but...Amberjack were a nuisance today. This guy was well into his 50lb range. Bill and his guys caught a pretty chunky limit of Snapper and managed to scrape up another mess of mingo, trigger and white snapper.

I know the 2 fish limit is aggrevating, but in all the years we fished off the sea reaper (about 10 years in a row a long time ago), we NEVER caught reds that size! We always limited, but never with fish that size.

8 hour today with some of my old customers, it was rough, thunderstorms and the current ran about 1.6 knots. Hey if it was easy anyone could do it right.

gman the 2 fish limit is not aggravating its the 48 day season thats aggravating. The two fish you can catch today outweigh any limit on average that you could catch in the past.

you know there's a bucket in your livewell?

I went out for the second time in 6 days Thursday. This time on the Sea Spray. Them snappers are biting for sure. This trip we caught a good many of beeliners and trigger fish. If you have a captain that will let you cull you can catch some real nice sized keepers.

Yep its the bait bucket we put it in there to clean it. We dont clean our bait buckets with bleach because it could contaminate the bait the next day.

They kept that Crevalle?

I didn't think they were good for anything but bleeding and pukeing all over the boat.

JC's make good cut bait and slabs for anything from snapper, grouper, sharks, etc.... Why buy more squid and cigar minnows if you can supplement your supply by catching your own?

That Jack was the biggest fish that guy had ever caught. He got him mounted thru grays taxidermy, yep we chop up everything we can for bait. I try to keep my business as profitable as possible while being as competitive as I can on my prices. My tricks are fuel economy by trolling most of the time on 6 and 8 hour trips and catching %90 of our bait. As long as we can catch good catches there is no reason to go fast.

Mount. Gotcha. He obviously wasn't using it for bait since it was back at the dock in the cart.

They are bloody son of a guns, I imagine they make great cut bait.

Are the fish you are culling dead or alive?

Alive the length of trip determines what size snapper we keep, unless its gut hooked then we keep it. Using circle hooks lessens the chance of a gut hooked fish so most just swim to the bottom pretty fast. If the dolphins are around the boat we put them in the live well till they have a chance of survival. If a small one gets killed because of gut hooked he gets eaten on the gril. We try not to waste any fish that we kill.

I use to cull until I realized I was a cull.

I've probably caught over 10,000 snapper this year and I have had less than 25 float off dead. Proper venting and the depth in which we fish are responsible for the low fish mortality.

BP, we bring every fish back to the dock, then cut them up.

Sorry guys for not getting pics up sooner. Here's a few pics from the last 2 trips I've run.

Rickybobby,
I enjoyed the article in the latest issue of AON magazine. I wish I could make it for a trip down this year. Good luck the rest of the year.