Today my fishin' buddies were John, Mike, Jamie and Chris who are all Brevard County firemen.  Chris is the nephew of one of the network managers at AT&T that I worked with for many years before my retirement.

They met me at my house at 6:00 AM and after filling the bait well with 3 or 4 dozen pinners I had caught yesterday we were off the the briny blue after passage through the locks. We headed south to the Liberty wreck to try to add a few hard tails to the bait well, but no dice today, the water was not very clean. We only able to catch one hard tail and a few lizardfish on the sabiki's. We then headed to Pelican Flats and the same off color water was there as well and spent only a few minutes trying to troll up a king on plugs.

Then off to the deep blue we went and passed through a large flotilla of sport fishermen who were apparently competing in some sort of billfish tournament out of Ft. Pierce. Stopped in the 230' - 245' bottom that I had recent success in and with a 1 knot current and light winds getting to the bottom with 10- 12 oz. wasn't a problem.

We had a pretty fair amount of action and lost a few heroes, in fact I had one on that took me to the gunnels' and broke the line.

Final tally for the day:
1 24" Red Snapper
3 Red Grouper with one released to grow up
1 Scamp Grouper
1 Gag Grouper (24 lbs. 9 oz.)
2 Banded Rudderfish
1 Bonito