When Mr. Jon booked this family fishing charter in Gulf Shores, he told me he wanted his kids to catch fish and a lot of them. We decided to go on May 15, 2009. The morning started uneventful and everyone was ready to go.
Mr. Jon was joined by his daughter, Mary Ann and his son in law Jeff. They brought their kids, Merry Kathryn, Luke and Ree Ree with them. Everyone was extremely excited about heading out to sea. We made the turn under the Perdido Pass bridge at Alabama Point and started working our way out toward the jetties. We had to cross over a dredge pipe that the US Army Corps of Enginneers is using to make the pass deeper.
We made it past the jetties and were heading right into a southeast wind and a 2 foot sea. The skies were a bit overcast with about a 20 percent chance of rain. We were out about 7 miles when our first troller went off and we hooked our first fish. It was a nice King Mackerel. The water had cleared up and the water temperature was at 75.9 degrees. Summer fishing has finally arrived.
We contintued heading south and we looked up and saw a weak water spout dropping down from the clouds. It extended all the way to the surface of the water. It lasted about 5 minutes before it lost its strength and dissappeared.
We ended up catching 4 additional King Mackerels on the ride out and before our first reef.
We started bottom fishing and caught a few Red Snapper that fought hard. Everyone's rod was bowed over fighting fish. We even had a wild dolphin show up and try to get a meal. We decided to move on and try to get away from the large mammal.
We caught a nice Mangrove Snapper that was beautiful. We had some pretty good strikes that cut our lines off. We even caught a small Amberjack.
We were headed to our last reef when we ran over a flock of flying fish. They were babies and they went everywhere when we approched them with the boat.
Jeff was trying to catch a grouper when a big Red Snapper hit his line. He did not know it was a snapper until we got it to the surface and saw that is was a 18 pound snapper that had been bitten in half by a bull shark.
We headed in after an exhausting morning catching some nice fish.