Back to the Skyway

I cut out of work early on Friday and after running a quick errand with Shawn and pressure washing my deck, I met up with my brother and we headed out to the Skyway for a couple hours of fishing.

Steve caught a pinfish right off the bat, and I hooked him through the dorsal fin and put him out on the grouper rod. Even with 3oz of weight, it was hard to keep the bait in place. The tide was outgoing and was pushing pretty hard on account of the full moon.

The tide also made it difficult to fish for bait with our lighter poles, but we managed to catch more than we needed and to occupy our time while we waited for the grouper rod to go off.

A guy down the way pulled in two gag grouper in 10 minutes, so we knew they were out there, but after an hour of our live bait swimming around happily, I reeled him and in and cut him up in to 1 inch by 1 inch cubes. The cubes went on our lighter poles, and I cut a nice steak out of the middle and laced it back on the hook to the grouper pole. We sent all the lines back in and waited.

About ten minutes later, my light tackle pole went off, and I pulled up and set the hook hard. My drag started screaming off the reel, and in the excitement of the moment, I actually loosened the drag when I meant to tighten it. By the time I corrected this rookie mistake, the line had gone limp.

I reeled it in to find that the 30lb test monofilament leader had been cleanly bitten off. Might have been a shark or a mackerel, but either way, I'll never know.

I caught a consolation mangrove snapper a while later, but he was undersized.

It's tough to miss out on the big fish I waited all day for, but hey, it was a great day of fishing with my little brother. Beats the crap out of sitting in the office!