Saturday
East winds 15 knots. Seas 2 to 4 feet. Dominant period 4 seconds. Protected waters a moderate chop. Slight chance of rain.
Saturday Night
East winds 15 to 20 knots. Seas 2 to 4 feet. Protected waters choppy. Slight chance of showers and thunderstorms.
Sunday
Southeast winds 15 knots. Seas 2 to 4 feet. Protected waters a moderate chop. Chance of showers and thunderstorms.

Never mind.

Where would you launch down that way Abolt? We fish out of St Andrews but would like to try the fishing up that way.

Good call.

Probably the best place for you to launch, not knowing the area, would be the public launch at Fred Gannon (Rocky Bayou) State Park right off HWY 20 coming out of Niceville . Good ramp, deep water, safe location to leave your vehicle and trailer (it's patrolled), 5.25 miles from the launch to the mid bay bridge. Come out of Rocky Bayou and head straight east. Also it's pretty much a straight shot across the bay to the Destin East pass if it was flat calm and you wanted to try to run out and fish the gulf.

Thanks for the info.

Anytime. Good luck.

Geno, if you are serious about it get up with me before you buy any of the trolling lures. I got interested in it years ago, bought a bunch of trolling/diving lures and immediately got side tracked. Would be glad to get rid of them at a substantial discount

I am interested - PM sent.

Just about everything in the Gulf will eat a Stretch 25 white with a red head.

I have a similar lure - mirrolure 111. I had three colors but lost one (pink) to the rocks in the Warrior while doing testing.

Thanks to BradB for loading the Geno household up with too many monster trolling lures to fit in a five gallon bucket.


Going offshore tomorrow to try them out. One of Mrs. Geno's fellow professors from Florida State was out day before yesterday and caught 16 gags to get four keepers for the two men in the boat. They averaged 12 pounds. They then went to two of the public reefs and loaded up on grey snapper and black sea bass.

I just loaded my old bottom rigs up with 50lb mono and hammered the drags down tight. We'll see what happens.

Any luck Geno?

We couldn't buy a fish on the trolling gear even though we found several rock piles that had fish on them and big clouds of bait. We came back to the best looking two rock piles and bait was still there. We fished for about two hours with bait before it got dark and caught two gray snapper, a wad of undersized black sea bass, a short snapper I can't identify and three groupers that were all short - largest was 22", smallest was 20". We lost a dozen or so really good fish we never saw.

There were a ZILLION boats out yesterday and the good fish were line shy. The gags we caught were on 12 lb line and rocked us up every time. We gave them a bunch of slack and put the rod in a holder and in about 5 or ten minutes, they swam free and the fight was back on. I will tell you - an 8-10 pound grouper on 12 lb line is an interesting thing to do. Mrs. Geno even managed to land one after he got rocked up. She used the gunnel as a fulcrum and I was sure she was going to break my bass rod she was using. Once we figured out what they wanted to eat and how to fish for them, we had about 45 minutes of daylight left. We caught all three of them in that time and they were still biting like crazy when we had to leave and run as fast as was comfortable back to the launch.

I would be back out there this morning but I have a ton of yard work to do and Mrs. Geno had a bad feeling about me going out alone.

Mrs. Geno got up and said she would like to go fishing again - we are heading back out.

Couldn't get the fish in for the sharks today. Lost a half dozen to them then only hooked sharks as far as I can tell. We caught a 6 foot tiger and an 8 foot tiger. Can't keep them in FL so back they went. I am a tired puppy.