Big fish of the day caught by Richard Payne of Estero on an 8 hour offshore trip with returning group from the Vanderbilt Fishing Club. The lucky red grouper was successfully released with the season currently closed, but we managed plenty of other fish for everyone to take home dinner.

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I have fished a couple of near shore and offshore trips over the last week or so with some excellent fishing to show for it. The 5 hour near shore trip was on the last day of gag grouper season for us in the Gulf of Mexico with Carla and Michael from St. Louis.



We caught grunts, lane snapper, quite a few out of season red grouper up to 26” or so, and 1 nice gag grouper over 30” to finish out the 2014 season on them.



We caught the fish on frozen squid, sardines, live shrimp, and frozen spo...
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Fishing has been excellent the last few weeks, despite our recent bouts with colder weather. The sheepshead bite has been excellent with plenty of fish caught on every trip.



We have also caught some nice black drum alongside the sheepies, along with some small redfish, pompano, and jack crevalles. Most of our fishing has been in the deeper water around the passes, where we have also caught a few small spotted sea trout as well.



The trick to catching the sheepshead is keeping the rod tip low a...
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After what seems like forever we finally have easy access to great live bait again. I’ve had several inshore fishing trips over the last couple of weeks where we started each day loading the livewell with scaled sardines, AKA whitebait. We have put the bait to good use on every trip with excellent bites, fishing mostly around mangrove shorelines on the higher stages of the tides.



We have caught as many as 30 snook in just a few hours with chances at several slot and over slot fish on every t...
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