Captain Chancey's Goliath Groupers

[MuskieBait]

Well, that's just called "When life deals you lemons, make lemonade."

We gave Goliath Grouper fishing for about an hour but nothing was going. Ben saw that I really want to get on some fish so he took us to an eel grass flats and that's where we caught Sand Weakfish, Jack Crevalle, Ladyfish and lots of Speckled Seatrout. I must have caught a dozen Speckled Seatrout.

We then went to get more bait and ran into some Cownose Ray that we could use for Goliath bait...but they were every difficult to snag (we're using them for bait so we're trying to snag some for bait)...and the one and only ray we snagged came off the hook...so we only had a Spanish Mackerel and a Jack Crevalle for bait.

Instead, we went to the beach to net some white bait but had a hard time...so we went back to the bridge to grab some bait. Finally, we fished on a wreck where there might be a Goliath. We did get one good hit and run where the fish rocked us after a 5min fight. Then we fished smaller baits for groupers landing 4 groupers and had many more that rocked us. We also had the Jack Crevalle on the Goliath rod and that's what we caught the 12lb Gag Grouper with.

With about 1.5 hours left, Ben suggested that we fish the mangroves on the way back and that's where we caught my Common Snook and Kazu hooked a 24" Speckled Seatrout.

Back at the dock, Ben said there are lots of little Mangrove Snappers and we used the remaining bait as cut bait and caught a couple of Mangrove Snappers. We were also trying to get Kazu onto one of the snook hanging out near the dock but they just wouldn't go.

Sometimes, when the game plan isn't working, you gotta change it up and try to salvage a trip. It's good we did that instead of trying to catch a Goliath on a poor condition day...

That's how I roll.