Great Trip and report! Waiting on opening for us June 1 , My friend has New Sea Hunt boat , cannot wait!
Great report!Great Day on the water today. I boarded my friend's 26 Pathfinder at 8 am and headed to Pensacola Pass. We stopped by a bait boat and loaded up with 80 live cigar minnows/scad, some for today and some to have ready for an offshore trip tomorrow. We went to our spot in 80 feet about 2 miles directly off Pensacola Beach. First fish was a 20# snap on a white spro-type bucktail sweetened with a dead cig. My friend fished slip lead with live cigar minnows. The bite was a bit slow but in 3 hours we limited out and lucked into two cobia. Me and my jig caught all the fish except the small snapper. The hook on the 4 ounce buck tail caused me to lose two fish, not stout enough... one cobia and one bottom dweller. Some one mentioned weak hooks on the spro's in a recent post.
I was super happy with my gear today, a result of reading posts by those with more experience than me. I used an Ocea Jigger 2000NRPG and a Super Tornado 558UL - spiral PE 1.5 - 4. I picked up the reel from Tony on this site. He could not recall what the line is but it looks about 50. (Thanks again Tony) It handled all those fish just fine and the light rod made the fights super fun - mostly point and crank style. I am leaving it home tomorrow and bringing the OJ 4000 Synit 250g to fish the 180ft plus of the 'edge'. View attachment 66120 View attachment 66121 View attachment 66122
I'm guessing you are going with the 5:1 gear ratio...?Great report!
And Nice setup. My go to snapper rod was an Ocea Jigger 2001 w/JM Ocean Devil UL. This season I'm gonna be trying the BV300 with the Ocean Devil UL! Should be awesome.
I got the 6:1. For such a small spool I prefer high gear ratios. For OJ2000 or Accurate 500 size I like 5:1.I'm guessing you are going with the 5:1 gear ratio...?
A neighbor prepared some snapper and cobia last night and added some shrimp, hush puppies, home made slaw and gumbo. Panko crusted fish were baked in oven - fish was 4 star. One of the cobia was roe'd so I brined the egg sac with sugar and salt for an hour, then placed them in the sun in front of a fan to get a nice pellicle. I dusted them with Old Bay and placed them on my kettle grill to cook/smoke at 250 for an hour and a half. When the roe hit 160 degrees internal temp, I brushed them with melted butter containing a hot pepper sauce. I pulled em 5 minutes later and voilà. The roe was delicious, much sweeter than mullet roe I often smoke.Fine days work right there.
We dont have to ask how the snapper tasted, do we?