Florida offshore bottom fishing - NJFishing.com Your Best Online Source for Fishing Information in New Jersey

Chrisper4694 · #1 09-09-2019, 01:58 PM

Was down in florida the other week fishing before the huricane with my buddy Morris Campbell did one day saltwater and two days fresh (the fw pics of peacocks, mayans and knife fish i posted on the fw section of the forum).

The plan was to hunt down a bunch of inshore species but the water was absolutely terrible...fortunately the weather was perfect for an offshore center console ride! We fished the gulf out of boca grande and had to drive about 20 miles offshore to find clear water, which isn't normal.

We ended up finding some schools of mahi and we got them feeding voraciously to the point that you didn't even need a lure, just a bare hook and they would attack it! Unfortunately the bigger ones never showed up so after a bit of fun we moved on.

We saw a sailfish and some yellow fin tuna but even with our fresh caught blue runners, sardines, and minnows we couldn't get them to bite so we moved on to hit some bottom spots. We settled into some spots and hammered multiple species of snapper including vermillion and lane and grouper, including some nice 10-12lbs red grouper and some smaller strawberries.

We had a few probably GIANT golliath grouper grab our big red snappers and pin us to the bottom (we were using fairly light gear and didn't have a chance of moving them ever). So we put some 2-3lbs snappers on a heavy duty set up and let it down but those damn things wouldn't touch it haha...they only wanted the 10-12lbs reds on the light gear!

All in all it was great fishing, but i'll have to go back for those damn goliaths and all the inshore species haha. plenty of delicious fish vacuum sealed and frozen that took t he plane ride back to NJ with me. and the gulf ocean was ridiculously calm it was crazy smooth...i've been on lake hopatcong in my tin can in rougher water!

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shrimpman steve · #2 09-09-2019, 02:33 PM

Fantastic report!!!
Thanks for posting

Chrisper4694 · #3 09-10-2019, 01:23 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by shrimpman steve

Fantastic report!!!
Thanks for posting

my pleasure steve!

Arbutis · #4 09-10-2019, 01:40 PM

Nice Reds. Delicious. And looks like a nice little Cubera? yes? Also delicious.

Can you tell me more about the process of getting them back to NJ flash frozen and vacuum sealed? Is there a service that you used to do that?

Thanks for sharing.

Gerry Zagorski · #5 09-10-2019, 02:41 PM

Great pictures and great report, as usual....

Chrisper4694 · #6 09-11-2019, 01:49 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arbutis

Nice Reds. Delicious. And looks like a nice little Cubera? yes? Also delicious.

Can you tell me more about the process of getting them back to NJ flash frozen and vacuum sealed? Is there a service that you used to do that?

Thanks for sharing.

I'm assuming you're talking about the 6th on down (the orangish one at the dock) My buddy said it was a really big mangrove snapper, i wouldn't have a clue so can't ask me, but he would know so i trust that it's a mangrove.

I didn't use a service, though i do believe there are some that will do if for like 80 bucks. What i did was, my friend vacuum sealed the fish and put them in his freezer. then the morning i was leaving i stuffed them into a walmart 24 can travel beer cooler (it's about the biggest one you can bring on the plane as a personal item, fits under the seat but just barely) with a yeti ice pack and 2 normal ice packs, whatever i could fit.

You can get through security with that as long as the ice packs are totally frozen at that point. The fish doesn't have to be frozen fyi, but i caught them monday and wasn't coming home til friday night so that's what i did. I brought salmon home from lake michigan the same way but i didn't freeze it because it was only a day i was there. I just put it in cold with ice packs around and on top if it and it was still very cold when i got home hours after packing it.

coming back from florida, the fish was almost totally still frozen solid (just a corner of one sheet was thawed a bit but still cold. It was probably in the cooler for about 10 hours total from leaving my friends to putting it in my freezer.

tjd24 · #7 09-11-2019, 03:59 PM

We used to bring home snapper, grouper, mahi, cobia, etc after a weekend trip to the Keys. Never froze the fish but packed them tightly in zip locks. We'd buy the cheapest wheeled cooler we could find at Walmart with ice packs & a roll of duct tape. If you write your name on the cooler you can check it like luggage. However, you must bring the tape so they can inspect the contents and you can re-tape. Never had a problem at the airport.
This method worked great and it was cheaper than paying for shipping. A plus was that we could freeze the fish when we got home.