Things started off ok, I caught a red grouper off the bottom who wasn’t quite bit enough, then a African pompano on the flat lined pilchard. Krystle and my dad were having fun catching yellowtails and other snapper.

After a while the bite had shut down so I tried dropping down a butterflied piece of ballyhoo and ended up catching a small grunt. While reeling the grunt in I noticed something was chasing it, immediately I thought it was a nurse shark. I gave the rod to Krystle so she could have some fun with it. She jigged the grunt a few times and opened the bail while the “shark” ate the grunt. We let him have for a minute or so and then closed the bail and proceeded to fight him up. Shes fighting a nice sized “shark” on my light weight ugly stick rated for 10-15lb line. Luckily its spooled with 30lb braid. Anyways shes having a hell of a time fighting this fish in with him making several runs down deep. No one on the boat thought much of it as we though it was a shark and we’re just having some fun, Krystle even stopped to pose for pictures while reeling him in. Everyone was laughing and having a good time. Then once she got the fish to the surface we noticed this was no shark…. it was a cobia! Boy everyone got excited then, I immediately called for the gaf and stuck the fish good bringing him in the boat on the first shot.

Cobia ended up being 40 inches to the fork and just about 20 pounds.

For those wondering, the fish was revived and swam off freely.

I went out again the next day with my dad and caught another black fin tuna similar in size to make it a great weekend! This one I caught using a billy bait smoke, rattle and troll. These billy baits really paid off this weekend maybe I’ll have to get me some more

Plus a shot of Krystle as a guest on Scott’s Reelin In the Keys fishing radio show

We must have made the right call because the reef was on fire. We caught several yellow tail snappers and then we’re surprised by a huge mutton snapper! This was exciting as it was the first mutton on my boat and the first for my friend. That mutton was followed by an even bigger mutton and we were pumped. We fished that reef the entire day. We ended up with a couple yellow tail snappers (one of them was a real nice flag), some spanish mackerels and two big fat mutton snappers.

The conditions were perfect for a night of yellow tailin’ the seas were around 1 ft, the moon was hidden and barely a touch of rain. We were loaded with 8 boxes of chum, a ton of squid and some fresh mullet that Raul had caught in his cast net earlier in the day. After a slow start full of grunts, we started pulling in the tails. I was pleasantly surprised almost everything we caught was atleast 12 - 14 inches, with some much bigger.

We ended up the night with more fish than we cared to count. Our take was full of yellow tail snappers, mangrove snappers, a few red snapper, one or two strawberry groupers and a few grunts.

What a great time we had, I hope to go down there again soon.

We’re fishing for snapper or some bottom fish with light tackle, basically just free lining out the shrimp and then all of a sudden bam I get hit with a smoker king. He was alot of fun on my little ugly stick, thank god I had just spooled it with 30lb braid otherwise there is no way I could have brought these kings in.

 Ended the day, I caught two kings about 3ft each and my buddy Paul caught one.