FISH FLASH: Confusion on the water but not in the catch

With the Gulf swishing around on Monday, several anglers braved the waters for some good catches.

One of the best catches of the day was a 15-pound red grouper caught by Craig Tatum on the Sweet Jody with Capt. Cliff Cox.

The cool thing about the red grouper is that it was caught on a flyline.

“I fought him for about 10 minutes and then Clifton (Cox) hand lined it up,” Tatum said.

“That’s the second one ever in my career that we’ve caught on a flyline,” said Capt. Cliff Cox.

“But the funny thing is we had three or four people trying to catch one on the bottom,” Cox said.

With the flyline, the bait was up in the water only about 10 feet down or so as opposed to on the bottom.

Captain said the grouper was probably following another fish up.

Anyhow the red grouper latched on to the cigar minnow and the rest is history.

The red grouper wasn’t the only thing pulled in on the Sweet Jody. They had several stringers filled with mingo, lane snapper, triggerfish, Key West porgy and amberine.

Ruth and Ed Lake of Illinois had a stringer loaded with triggerfish, mingo, amberine and lane snapper.

“We’ve been coming for about 14 years,” said Ruth. “We love the Sweet Jody, but it was rough today.”

“We had two different wave patterns out there today,” Capt. Cox said.

“A confused sea is the best I can describe it. We had to work hard at it today,” to get the fish, Cox said.

Zeb White, of North Carolina, who’s been coming for about 18 years said, “It was rough but fun. There’s no bad days of fishing.” White loaded his stringer with triggerfish, mingo, lane snapper and a Key West Porgy.

Before the Sweet Jody backed in, the Destin Princess with Capt. Reid Phillips at the helm backed in with about 33 anglers.

“It was a like a bathtub out there today with waves going everywhere,” Phillips said.

Phillips said the bite was a little slow, which he attributed to a full moon and having to deal with porpoise most of the day.

But they still brought in several stringers filled with mingo, triggerfish, amberine and lane snapper.

Fishing’s not too bad right now, if you don’t mind the confusion of waves.

But as White put it, “There’s no bad days of fishing.”

See you at the docks.