Well, it was about time I was able to get back on the fishing track! It felt awesome to once again being out there. The peacefulness of the bridge and the ocean sounds along the regular slurping gasps of those awesome Tarpons brought back so many memories and so much inner peace to enjoy happily along side my son, nephews, and friends. We got to the bridge much later than I wanted. I wanted to be there by 9pm so we could cath some snappers before midnight but ended getting the around 1am.
Soon after we got there I deployed a chum bag to bring in the smaller snappers and cast a bit behind the chum slick for the bigger ones. Antita was the very first fish we got, a nice 16 inch snapper. Picture below.
She was followed by my nephews and my son with some black groupers, and snappers that had to be released due to their smaller size. Below is Liam with a Black Grouper tat was released.
Below is Micheal with an alsmot legal size mutton snapper that was released.
Below is Erick with a nice grunt that just joined the cooler for a frying pan sandwich later on.
The little fellow below was a lucky one that was missing a nice chunk by his head. Might have been used as bait or might have escaped another fish trying to eat it. Well, it got another life as it went back to the water.
As the early morning darkness ended fish slowly stopped biting giving us a chance to rest.
Then the sun came up and so were we. There was a lot of seaweed with the current but we kept on fishing and throwing it right back in the water. The guys were on their feet up and down the bridge as schools of Tarpon and Permit kept on swimming by. Hardly nothing was biting with this dark cloudy morning. Then my son and Liam thought they had a very big fish when half hour later it turned in to an old rusted anchor some boat has once lost.
As the sun came up I deployed another bag of chum and the small snappers and angle fish were now visible but nothing was biting so we waited a bit and took the time to look around the beauty of the bridge and the Florida Keys horizons.
An hour later the fish woke up and started chewing. It was a lot of small yellow tails and mangrove snappers with a few grunts in between. Then in passed some tourist tellling us that the other fishermen were only catching small fish but not many, then they asked me and as soon as they do my line line start going and my reel started humming. Thank goodness that at the end it was a nice 20″ Mutton Snapper. I can say it was nice for bridge fishing as many know what it’s like releasing so many fish after the minimum size was raised to 18″. I used half a ballyhoo plug hooked by the tail bone. Below is the pic.
After that we used feathered jigs and got a couple of Jacks. The mackerel were present but on the slack tide they just were not chewing. They would follow the spoons and turn away. Well it was now 9am and was time to get back home as we all had other things to do. I was happy we were able to have a good time and that dinner was caught. A day fishing always beat a day at work even if you only catch a handful of fish. On the way out you can see how many were fishing on this hot day. Only a couple of people, hope they got dinner too.
Thanks for reading and hope you at least enjoyed the pictures.
Tight lines!
ShoreBound Adventures 