Report for Destin, Florida - Nearshore

Another weather day today. We sure have had a lot of 'em so far this summer. Today was a regular and his family who understand that there's no point in going if not going to be fun. Somedays it's hard telling a vacationer that I just can't take them on the one day a year they had planned. Fishing is still great when the wind and seas cooperate. On Monday I ran a half day with 4 "new" folks I'll remember for a while. We started out snapper fishing and the bite was hot. Even with teaching beginers we had 10 good ones in the box on the first stop. Next stop we found a big school of amberines that contributed another dozen fish to the box before the bottle nose shut us down. We ran offshore a bit to lose the dolphin and caught 5 keeper grouper and a bunch of shorts. Back inshore to a snapper spot and we have a limit at 11:15. I told the folks we still had a little fishing time and I knew where some "short" AJ's were if they just wanted a good pull since the box was 'bout full. All in agreement so off we went and down went 4 live baits. Everybody hooked up and the whole school of jacks came up with the hooked ones. In the middle of the jacks were 4 cobias with biggest looking more like a log than a fish. After 15 minutes of chinese fire drill I was able to get a bait in front of the big one without a jack grabbing it first. We had a 35 minute fight that all 4 anglers participated in before I gaffed the 78# fish. All my anglers were beat and we came in a half hour late but I didn't hear any complaints. The only problem was their cooler wouldn't hold all the fillets when I finished cleaning fish. Capt. Larry Pentel