Talk about your great anticipation of a nice day. We had the choice of Wednesday or Thursday to go out; both days were supposed to be nice; but Thursday's forecast looked the best, especially since Wednesday was supposed to be real nice with conditions continuing to improve through Thursday. We planned on Thursday so we would have a flat sea, which meant we could go anywhere we wanted and have a good time, while enjoying a nice flat ocean with hardly any swell. Ready for this? As we left the dock and made our way toward the ocean, we were all smiling and daydreaming of what we were about to do and just thanking the Lord for the nice day we were about to enjoy. As we neared the jetties, I noticed there seemed to be a little more breeze than there should be and I could notice a distinct wind chop on the surface and some wind waves associated with it. The forecast was SW 5-10 with seas of 2 feet or less. They missed it just a bit. The wind was blowing around 12kts dead out of the north. There was a 2-3 foot roll, tight together, and white capping pretty regularly. It made our northeast track a little bumpy with an occasion salt spray to the face but since I'm already use to botched forecasts and a challenging sea, we continued on out 25 miles. The snapper were home!! We got our 4 man limit of red snapper with 8, and released 15-20 legal fish along with several undersized fish. We also got our limit of vermillion snapper up to 3 lbs with 40, 14 black sea bass, a 20lb amberjack, a few sharks, and lost several nice fish due to lack of practice. The ocean layed down later so we were able to make about 37 mph back towards shore while we enjoyed a beautiful sunset over a flat ocean. It was a fulfilling day; our minds were filled with the memory of strong fighting fish, our muscles were filled with lactic acid as a result of the days battles, and our fish box was filled with the fish that caused all of it to happen. Thanks for reading and keep those rods bent!!
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