Florida middle grounds 39 hour trip

bryguy

Old Mossy Horns
So just completed my first Florida middle grounds trip. It was everything I had hoped for and while my catch was not the best, that is solely on me and not the boat or the crew.
So I leave Gainesville around 9:30 or 10 Friday morning for a leisure drive down to Tampa. I arrived around 12:30 and unloaded my gear and get my ticket and grab a quick bite to eat for lunch. We have a seminar at 1:30 that is just an orientation for the entire trip. We begin loading bait shortly after that and then our gear goes on board. We leave the dock at around 3pm and are informed we are in for a long run up to the upper portion of the middle grounds to fish a few areas that haven't been fished in a while. We have our dinner and then hit the bunks for some sleep. We finally get to the fishing grounds around 1:30 or so Saturday morning. We start fishing and I immediately catch 3 nice mangrove snapper and a couple of decent beeliners.....I am thinking that there isn't anything to this Florida fishing and proceeded to place a curse on myself for the rest of the trip because of that thought. Mangroves were being caught on all sides of me but I couldn't feel the bite or figure out the deal. So I proceed to ask a few questions and adjust my setup and finally manage to pick off a few nice mangroves and beeliners. We pulled up on one spot and first drop red snapper were everywhere. I tried to get baits past them but to no avail. Those things are crazy thick over there. But the for hire season closed last week so they all went back. Next stop we pulled up on was covered in AJs, and I mean some HUGE ones as well. Saw the biggest ameberjacks I have ever seen caught. We are talking 70 plus pound fish regularly. Needless to say we had to pull of that spot as well. We fished on till around 8pm Saturday before we pulled stakes and headed for home. Overall it was a great trip, the food on the boat was outstanding and the captains and crew were outstanding. It is just a different style fishing and honesty the mangrove snapper will put a sheepshead to shame as far as a lite bite. I did bring home 10 or so mangroves and about the same for the beeliners(I am sure if I would have really fished for the beeliners I could have worn them out) and I will do another trip or two before this project ends. Here is a video of the trip and your truly appears a few times throughout.

https://youtu.be/2IiU3yzpCbQ


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bryguy

Old Mossy Horns
Looks like a fun trip, although a dang long one.
Have a 44 hour coming up next weekend. They run some 53 and 60 hour trips...........I thought at one time I would like to go on one of the 10 day long range trips out of southern California. not so sure now. LOL.....
 
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