by: Mark Clabaugh
WE had a charter the other evening leaving around 4pm. The weather was nice and getting a little cool with the wind steady from the North.
Our Charter was wanting to catch some Red Fish and we had promised a catch. Now, that is not something you want to do all the time fishing for Red Fish in the bay. Anyone who fishes Red Fish knows, that you can be skunked.
Well, we anchored up off the west jetty by Ft McCrae and fished with Menhadden and mullet with no luck, moved over to the east side of the pass and the same. All we were catching was a cold and our charter was catching a buzz.
We then decided that this is not working and we were about to eat a trip because I promised fish! Well, we then decided to break out BIG RED. That is the name we gave the Mann's Stretch 25.
After trolling a few moments we got our first hook up, 41lbs! Nice fish and an excellent fight. Within 1hr we had 5 Redfish all over 35lbs.
Before we knew it we had landed 11 fish and lost 1. We agreed on one more pass through the edge of the channel and all of a sudden, wham!
We hooked up the fish and it was taking line, we then backup up the boat to control the loss of the line since we were getting close to the bale. Fortunatly the fish turned. We fought the fish for another 15 minutes (we are talking only 50ft of water here) and landed a 62lb Grouper.
We then circled around to see if we could find what the fish was on and no luck.
It was a nice evening!!!
