# Ft. Pickens 9/30/11



## Longbow14 (Aug 8, 2011)

So it was friday and having no money being college students my wife, two co-workers and myself loaded up the pathfinder around 2ish and drove out to fort pickens for a few hours of fishing.
The wind comming off the land was stacking up waves in the pass but the gulf was glassy. We started by filling the bait bucket with fingerling herring (alewife) and a dozen hardtails and pinfish. before we could bait our second heavy rod the drags starts screaming on a grouper rig with a live hardtail on it. my buddy Doug bullied a four foot blacktip on to the beach. we debated wether it was a bull or a spinner but looking at the chompers my bet is a blacktip. two more times our rigs got parted before we could see what we hooked into. we also lost two more rigs at the end of the night do to the pilings and other structure on the bottom.
with our baits in the water I started tossing the live herring on a 1/0 jhook with a 30 lb mono leader. i caught two spanish that were charging up from below to slash the schools all around the pier, and the group managed a few more fish too. It seems like we were late to the action as others were limiting out on them at that point. they were all in the 16-18 inch range with a few pints thrown in. 
I decided to freshen our bait and on my first drop have no idea what hit my sabiki but it took drag i've heard of macs hitting sabikis but i know there are pompano in the area too.
The Mac attack died off when the sun started to so we tossed and egg sinker onto our herring rigs, myself and my coworker bagged a 22 and 24" red respectively. and that was about all that was caught till we left at 8.

So grand total:
1 shark (first i've ever seen caught)
2 redfish (first i've ever caught)
5 spanish (tossed one that was 12ish back, also my first Mac I've caight from a pier not a boat)









very good day and a great way to forget about the week.


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## Smarty (Nov 23, 2008)

Nice slot red! Fish like that helps you forget all the BS throughout the week! Frying that bad boy up makes you have a good week for sure. Keep on after that fighter. Just the struggle makes it worth the time of having fun and enjoying the fight.


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## Longbow14 (Aug 8, 2011)

Everything we caught looked real healthy too. The other red had a spot cadul area and another on the tail. I'll see if I can get a picture of it, also being my first red and the largest fish I've caught in over a year that was and amazing fish to fight I see why they are so darn popular now


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## Boat-Dude (Sep 24, 2011)

There has been a few legal reds, I caught like 15 small reds.


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