My crew today were my fishin buds Mason & Brent Williams, Donnie Poston and Dave Larkin who is an attorney friend of Mason's. Fully realizing that the weather forecast for the remainder of the week and weekend meant no fishing at least until Monday we decided to get out again rather than wait. As it turned out our lingering until the late afternoon over the northern end of the 27 fathom ridge to finally get what we went after resulted in a rainy ride home through some lightening filled thunderstorms.

Started the day looking for pogies and we finally netted enough by 10 AM so off we went to the 27 fathom ridge. First and on virtually every subsequent drop, no heroes, but a bunch of short 16" to 19 1/2" red snapper. We must have caught at least 30 of them throughout the day. How is it that they only seem to grow to 19 1/2"???? With a 1 knot current on the 27 we moved east to the cones in hopes of fishing the deep stuff for some bigger game. No way Jose, a 6 knot current into a north wind and no way to hold bottom so back to the 27 we went. We continued pulling short snapper, triggers and porgies until Donnie finally got a nice scamp at about 3:30 PM. We continued working the 27 fathom ridge north until Mason, on what turned out to be our 20th last drop, brought up a nice 25# Gag and on the next last drop Dave hooked up and caught his Gag. On my "last drop" I hooked up on what I'm sure was a gag as well but the fish brought me to the gunnels and I pulled the hook.

After the bite that I attributed to the sudden drop in barometric pressure, we could see the  thunderstorms we were destined to encounter so we quickly suited up in our rain gear. I put the "Goin Off" on autopilot and navigated using that 12 KW radar to the fullest. We headed home for Port Canaveral at 33 knots in the driving rain, lightning and dark. We got the full adventure today and I'm sure the boys were relieved when I throttled back inside the channel at the port.

Final tally for the day:
1 Blackfin Tuna about 25#
2 Gag Grouper 18# & 25#
1 Scamp Grouper 12#
2 Jolthead Porgies
2 Triggerfish