Fun, Sun and Fish in Florida! 1

One of the great things about fishing is that there is something for virtually everyone.  Nelly has his annual trip to Sitka and I have Florida.  One of the things that I love about fishing in Florida is the variety that it offers.  In two and a half days of fishing this past week, we caught 16 different kinds of fish and had shots at a few others. 

As with any fishing trip, timing is everything.  The fish have to be around and the weather has to co-operate so you can get to them.  Over the past couple of years, my timing hasn't been that good on my trips to Florida but this year has been a different story.  We've had great weather on or trips and the fishing has been incredible!  This trip was no different, we had flat calm seas and quick limits of grouper.  

Normally we try to anchor over a spot and chum the fish to us but with the seas being so calm we decided to drift and cover some water. By the time I got the boat stopped and said lines in, my dad was already pulling in a keeper sized red grouper. Mason and Sonya quickly followed and I hadn't even wet a line.  We marked our spot with a buoy and kept drifting over and around it for the next three hours as we sorted through one just short red after another before we got our limit.  We were using finger mullet, squid, sardines, jigs and swimbaits and all were equally successful.

While we were grouper fishing we couldn't help but notice all of the life out on the water, schools of bonita and small dorado were everywhere.  We decided to find out if there were any blackfin, bigger dorado or kingfish mixed in as well.  We did a little running and gunning after schools of fish busting the water.  Mason and Madden were on the bow tossing swimbaits and jigs into the feeding schools and pulling out bonita.  It wasn't what we wanted for the table but it sure did make for some nice bloody bait to use for shark fishing later in the week.

Day two was a carbon copy of the first day only we had my brother Jonathan on the boat as Sonya elected to stay home.  We went out to the same general area and before I could get a line wet fish were coming over the side.  We made pretty quick limits of red grouper and threw back some really nice gag grouper (closed season). Mason hooked up with a nice 37 inch cobia to top off the morning. 

After having seen all the life the day before, we made sure we came ready to do some trolling.  My brother Jonathan had just installed our new Cannon downriggers on the boat and I needed to show him how to use them.  Downriggers are just starting to become really popular in Florida and Cannon dominates the market. We rigged the downrigger rod with a spoon and dropped it down to about 20ft.  On the other side we had a plug with a small tuna feather on the shotgun rod.  It didn't take long and we had our first takedown on the downrigger.  Jonathan brought the spanish mackeral boatside for a "gentlemen's release". As he was putting the spoon back down a big kingfish hits and blisters Jon's thumb before he could get the bail flipped.  The birdsnest that ensued was one of the finest peices of work I've ever seen, no saving that line.  We trolled for short while longer and had a few more hits before Jonathan landed a final bonita.

With two great days offshore, we decided to stay close and fish for sharks off Anclote Key.   We made the 5 minute run and dropped anchor.  We were fishing a deep channel and hoping for a big shark while keeping our eye out for any tarpon that might be within casting distance.  We saw a tarpon in the distance tearing up some bait but we couldn't get that shallow with our boat. We decided to go to a differentspot where we had great success before.

This time the sharks showed up, first it was an 8ft hammerhead that decided to take a look at the boat after breaking us off.  I was up next and knew I had a nice one on when all of a sudden the shark goes airborn putting on a show like he thought he was a marlin.  Unfortunately, a minute later the line snapped and I had nothing to show for it.  We did manage to land a few sharks but the ones landed were on the small side.  The plan had been to just fish the first few hours of the morning outgoing tide and then head back to the house.  Mason had talked his grandpa into some BBQ and if there is anything we Tobeck's like as much as fishing, it's a good BBQ.