Wasn’t too bad at least for folks that don’t get to fish much. It was all of that size plus some that I couldn’t see over and I’m 6ft, but they were rollers and about 8 seconds wave periods. We fished out of Clearwater. Saturday it was a family affair and we didn’t make but 7 miles offshore cause it was a little rough for the women. My wife always gets sea sick and of course she puked like 6 times, but she just wears it and catches fish. Also first time ever found a capsized boat! Thought for sure we were going to find people cause it looked fresh, but we didn’t. Called it in the Coast Guard and we weren't the first to report it so we snapped some pics and went on our way.
It was supposed to “calm” down this morning and since the boat and gear was already packed and ready the hardier mariners decided to give it a go again this morning. Well it was not calm and the wave period was shorter so it was super choppy, but we went 25 miles out anyways cause we were dead set on filling the cooler. Only got about 2 hours of fishing in because we to be back by 12 and the 45minutes ride took 1.5 hrs, but had a great morning. Put 10 nice mangroves, 5 grunts, 2 porgies, and the highlight of the trip a big bull hog fish.

Nice haul

👍🏻👍🏻

Nice

Love me some Hogs.Have never caught one on hook and line but put 3' of steel shaft through a bunch of them in my spearing days.

That’s the only way I’ve ever done it. Funny the guys on the west central gulf started targeting hogs cause there was very little regulations on them, and you couldn’t hardly keep any other reef fish. My dad said that now that they have gotten good at catching them every year they make the regs stricter and stricter. The bag limits have gone down and the size limits have increased consistently over the last several years. By the way the technique we used was the lightest egg sinker you could get to the bottom with. In our case that was 1oz in a knocker rig set up, 3 feet of 15lb flouro leader, 3-0 circle hook, and live shrimp. BTW this technique works well on mangrove snapper as well, and limits the amounts of short grouper bites vs traditional cut bait.

Snapper ceviche tonight

Heck yeah!