Continuation part 3

[Captain Mike Ellis]

I was part of a two day two boat trip with Billy Wells (Wild Bill Charters) on the 10th and 11th. I did get the jump on them and I am putting the report from both trips up before they get a chance to do so. I don’t have any pictures from their trip as I am still waiting on them to be sent to me. The first day I had Tony, Chuck, Bill, and Jeff onboard for a day of tuna fishing. The. weather was just about on the verge of not being worth the run to the chosen area but the Freeman made the 3-5 beam sea very manageable. Mullet was hard to come by for me that day but hardtails were very easy. The fishing started out pretty slow but the dolphin started to come in one by one and we put four nice ones on the ice. The tuna were all marking deep but the marks were rising up shallower. At first there were a couple of bust here and there. Then we got Jeff on his very first yellowfin of which he did a great job on and got to enjoy eating the still beating heart. After a quick cleanup we got back into position and immediately hooked our second fish which Tony beat quick. After that things slowed down and I made the call to head to another rig to look for some easier fish. I should of stayed as Billy got onto some good ones. Of course the next rig was barren and we fished it for awhile with nothing to show for it. We headed to the house with two 70lb yellows and four dolphin. The following day we switched out some crew members and the guys that wanted to go and catch some grouper jumped on my boat. I would like to take credit for the results of this VERY ROUGH day but I can’t. The kristal 651 did all the work for us along with some volunteer mullet. The trip actually started out slow with the first four bites we had come unhooked on the way up. But after that we shook off the bad mojo and put the smack down on 9 snowy grouper from 15-30lbs and a bouns Warsaw in the 80lb range. I put a cap of ten grouper on the deepwater grouper trips since they take longer to repopulate a rig. We hit our 10 fish limit with ease. And the satisfying thing is we left them snapping hopefully to be left alone until I need them. My crew on this trip are all bottom fishermen from Florida and they said they have never had a grouper trip like this one before. When I get the pictures from both trips I will attach them to this post. It is awesome to live in the Sportsman Paradise.
Capt. Mike