I was planning to fish Cape Cod this week, but I didn't see good weather there. So instead I decided to drive down to NC for grouper as wheaher forecast was good there and it's been long time since I fished grouper in NC. I called Capt Joe and he told me to come down on Friday and he has a charter on Thursday.
As I had to finish some work before the trip, I could leave my office after 8:00 PM on Thursday and I barely arrives at Sneads Ferry, NC just before scheduled time at 6:00 am without any rest.
Lee, who is a professional guide for redfish, joined the trip.
When I checked my tackles, I found I didn't bring my reels. :?
I borrowed 80 lbs mono lines from Capt Joe and put it in a spare reel.
The first spot is only 8 miles from the inlet in 65 feet and I was surprised pretty decent size gag grouper 8 - 15 lbs were caught there. I tried jigs for a while, but I couldn't get any hit at all though there were lots of nice groupers under the boat. I switched to bait and I landed immediately 5 nice groupers. I couldn't understand why they didn't hit my jigs though there were lots of groupers.
But, this was not the first time that groupers ignored my jigs.

Joe worked slowly toward deeper water by checking many spots he stored in his machine. You got to see how many spots he stored from almost 30 years commercial grouper fishing
After some slow fishing around noon, we started to catch again in deeper water in 80 f - 85 ft. For some reason I don't know, grouper hit my jigs this time. But I kept losing them as mono stretched too much. I don't know how I jigged cod in 300ft - 400ft before braid line era. @( If I had my reel with braided line, I could have landed at least 6 - 8 nice groupers on jigs on the trip.
The trip was cut short due to severe thunderstorm warning and it was a quite scary running through lightening thunder storm
The grouper regulations are changed to the worse. The current regulation is 3 grouper per day per person with only one gag is allowed. And the recreational/commercial grouper fishing is closed from Jan. 1st. It is another rediculous regulations as there are so many groupers in NC and there are very few fishing pressures.