Christmas Eve Offshore Fishing

Ran offshore 45 miles yesterday with some family that I had in town to try and show them what Naples fishing can be. Day started off on the wrong foot as our pinfish delivery got canceled due to some engine problems on their end. Anyways we ran out to about 15 miles to catch some squirrel fish and sand perch to use for bait since the pinfish didn't arrive. We used small jigs and chunks of squid and within about 30 minutes had 50 in our well. After catching bait we ran another 30 miles to some live bottom and started drifting. Picked up 2 Keeper Red Grouper relatively quickly. Things slowed down so we ran to a wreck that was a couple miles away from where we were grouper fishing. Rigged a couple of the sand perch on some heavy gear for free lining and within a couple minutes had our first AJ on...they fight a lot harder than a walleye, so it took some coaching until my crew figured out how to pull them up. BUT eventually they were giving the AJs a run for their money. Green jigs also worked good! After we caught enough AJs for a lifetime (you really only need to catch one and then you're good) we decided to try putting some more groupers in the box. We pulled anchor and stopped off at some new live bottom we randomly saw on the sonar and decided to try it for grouper. We ended up getting 4 more keepers here finishing off the 2 per person limit for my guests. Finished off the day catching a variety of snappers! Overall it was an excellent day with glassy seas; hopefully the weather stays like this! {%image_id=57220%}{%image_id=57219%}{%image_id=57218%}{%image_id=57217%}{%image_id=57216%}{%image_id=57211%}{%image_id=57212%}{%image_id=57213%}{%image_id=57214%}{%image_id=57215%}{%image_id=57210%}{%image_id=57209%}