A night in the Gulf! 6/22-6/23/2013

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Nate and I decided to do an all nighter out on some wrecks and reefs. we figured the "super moon" would be a good night to try our first night in the gulf. To be honest, any other night i would have feaked out a couple times. This is definitely not like the west coast were we had so much light polution and didn't have to go very far, seeing other yaks and boats isnt a problem, out here though, it is. Nathan has this light on his yak, made especially for kayaks, that isn't really that bright and gives off a yellow glow, easily blending in with the city lights of Pensacola and Alabama to the west. Luckily, however, the moon was bright enough and i could make out his silhouette and find him.

We launched around 5:30pm. An hour and a half later than planned due to traffic coming from both ways. hit up between the bars and past the second sand bar looking for bait. no hard tails or blue runners to be found but plenty of cigs. nathan had a smaller sabiki and loaded up on them, he comes up and says he's "LOADED!" great bro, i got like 6... haha. i manage a 7th and we head off. started trolling a duster with cigar minnow and my X rap. he trolled a duster and his Yozuri. we hit up a spot i found last time but there was nothing, no structure or fish. i think it really might have been a trash can drifting on the bottom, or someone removed it. By this time it was past 8:30pm and i started to wonder if anything would hit us on the troll, unless we rolled over some snapper. Well at 9:30 I was answered with this king!
it was around 40" and didn't really fight like it. sorry for the blurry pics, nates phone case wouldn't allow it to focus right.


now that we have prime bait we moved on, still trolling but feeling a lot better about the night to come. 10:45pm and we get to our second spot. do two drifts with live cigs for nothing... then we head on to our third spot. the Tex barge. do a drift with cigs and king for two small snapper. back they go then we do another drift for nothing... we drifted it 4 or 5 times and got another small snapper and a 3ft snapper shark. I also snagged structure and broke off. we decided to move on and as we were leaving, Nathan went to put his trolling set up in his holder right behind him and missed, sent it straight to the bottom! i think he's looking for a diver to get it. possible reward! lol. so off to our 4th spot. this ones going to take a minute to get to. around 1am we get on it and its on! two legal snapper right off the bat for me. release them both and nathan has a couple C&Rd as well. then he hooks up and i was thinking he had a grouper but he pulled up this bad boy!
i think he said 19lbs...


so now he has one in the bag and i feel left out! pulled up a good one about 9lbs and bagged it. then we hit a hole we know has some monsters in it and got rocked time after time! same deal as a few weeks ago only this time they were sucking us right into their holes and cutting us off 3ft above the hook on the braid. Nates new reel, a release reel, lost its anti-reverse so it was out of commission for the rest of the trip.

We have a camera sighting of a big Goliath grouper down there so that definitely on our bucket list. Getting owned several times in a row get old, so we went back to our snapper hole about 40 yards away and decided to get our limit with the next two... and they were keepers. not as big as any we originally got, but its a limit.

Time to troll back! 2:50am and were trolling back. Nate didn't have a trolling rod anymore so I was just keeping up with him and we were moving a bit faster than normal.

picked up this 32" king (tip length) on the way in. checked the watch and it was 3:31am.


landed around 4:45am and had this to show. obviously the first king didn't make it back.


went and got more ice and Nathan decided it was time to go home. I decided to head back out and check out a few spots while trolling for another king. well... couldn't find bait and i ran into a school of Bobo that i chased for over a mile and couldn't connect with any of them! watched some monster fish slam their school too. not sure what they were but it wasn't dolphins or sharks. Hand fed a Remora a bean and cheese burrito and played with a little white Cobia under my yak for a bit then headed in. got rained on several times but I made it back just in time for the heaviest and windiest part of the storm.