Florida trip

[Shooter7]

Just got back from a trip to Destin, FL. Didn't have any reef time while down there, so substituted by going on my first gulf fishing trip. There were 20 people on board, first thing I noticed was a group all wearing STL Cardinals hats, they were all from here. Pretty coincidental. Anyway, here's some pics:

Leaving the harbor at 7:00 a.m.

Heading out with Destin in the background. Smoooooooth seas, no sea sickness on this ride:

My stepson landing a snapper:

A trigger that I caught (that's a standard sized laundry basket):

Everyone on board caught their limit and then some. I lost count, but my stepson and I caught at least 30 fish combined ranging in size from about 3 to 8 pounds in size. One person got a barracuda and I caught some kind of other fish I forget the name of right now. It was a 6 hour trip with about 3 hours or so of it actually fishing. Here's a pic of the full catch before cleaning at the dock:

 

[geoxman]

Isn't it awesome!!!! I love DS fishing! The last time we went we caught a bunch of Spanish Mackeral (sp) and some Yellow Jacks. Nothing tastes better than fresh fish meat!
How did you cook them?
Great pics!

 

[Shooter7]

Yeah, it was a good time. When your arms get tired from reeling in all these fish, you're doing some heavy fishing. Had to start using some different bait because we were at our limit on red snapper, so we were trying to get black and mingo snapper, as well as anything else that would bite. Water was pretty clear, so we were keeping eyes open for other fish swimming by which members of the crew would cast out to and try to hook, then hand the rod to one of the fishing party to fight the fish into the boat. That's how the barracuda was caught. The one lady from stl was complaining to her husband that she wasn't catching anything (not a person who had fished much and was probably missing the fish biting on the line - they weren't biting real hard) so they got that cuda hooked, then handed her the rod. Had dolphins around the ship the whole time and many times while moving about, there were flying fish that zipped up just off the bow and would skim just above the surface for really long distances. Wish I had gotten more pics, but we were so busy fishing and the time was so short out there that I didn't want to pause to do a lot of pic taking.

Haven't eaten the fish yet. They filleted it all and tossed it all into a bag which we took back to our condo and stuck in the freezer. It's kind of a big ball of frozen fillets right now in my freezer. I purposefully had red snapper our last night down there so my wife could taste it and even though I thought it tasted great, she wasn't impressed, so I'm not sure who's going to help me eat all this fish if I thaw it out. Maybe I'll drag the grill out to the street and sell sandwiches at the side of the road. :lol:

 

[Shooter7]

Oh, and this beast was caught just off shore a few months ago:

scary :eek1:

 

[drummereef]

Fish killer! j/k Looks like a fun trip. Destin is a nice place to get away for some r & r. Did you get to keep the trigger? Never seen that on a menu.

 

[Shooter7]

You will find trigger on the menu down in that area. There sure were several of them caught just on our one boat that day. I think there was something like 8 or 10 caught like the one that I pictured, and one lady caught a big Queen Trigger as well. Very pretty. They got a picture of it and quickly released it.