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Posted 17 December 2008 - 10:10 AM
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Fishing Report
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED
Grouper and Tiles
14 December 2008
A Recap of Skip’s quest: Captain Skip Feller runs the premier head boat fleet out of Rudee Inlet, and has put anglers on fish all his life. But Skip has had little time to go himself. Although I had invited him to fish with us several times, our schedules didn’t line up until my parents were visiting in October for my birthday. Skip went fishing with us for the first time. During this trip Skip caught an unexpected surprise, a huge citation bluefish that landed him attention from the media and the local fishing community. On our next trip, Thanksgiving Day, Skip again joined us to catch my citation triggerfish. Everyone on the boat scored with a citation trigger, thus citation number two for Skip. Next, Ben Shepherd called me up and told me that the night was right to go to the CBBT to get Skip his citation striper. We hopped onboard with CAPT Ben, and by 11pm, Skip was the proud owner of his 3rd 2008 citation. The following weekend, the weather was sketchy, so we decided to stay nearshore. CAPT Darren Foster and Sean Doran rounded out my crew as we targeted some big tog. With a great tog day of over 20 fish, with several citations to over 12 pounds, Skip landed citation number four for the year with a 10-pound, 15-ounce brute. This provoked a discussion among my crew about Skip’s unusually fast-paced progress. We decided he might as well go for Expert Angler with 6 citations. Skip was enjoying his rekindled passion for the chase, and graciously submitted to our plans for him. Sean was next up to bat, and hit a home run with citation number five when he put Skip on a big speck at the Hot Ditch. Ok, what’s next? Everyone gave their input, and it was decided. We were taking Skip for the next best bet, either a seabass or blueline tilefish. So here we were…6 citations in seven weeks, could we do it?
Back to the chase: With the fishing community rallying behind Skipper’s quest for his first Expert Angler Award, my crew made the decision to go for number six this weekend. We left at 5:30 am Sunday with another All-Star crew: Captain Darren Foster, Captain Danny Davis, Captain Wes Feller, and of course…Captain Skip Feller. It was a long ride to the tilefish grounds. As long as we were in the vicinity, Skip and I came up with a few other “side” missions. Wes had never caught a citation Tile, and although Darren had put many folks on nice grouper…he had never boated his own. So we also aimed to put Wes on a citation tile and Darren on a grouper…a pretty tall order, but we were up for the challenge!
We stopped first for a shot at the seabass. We jigged and bait-fished with squid and cut bait. We pulled up some nice seabass, but Skip only caught one that seemed close, but it weighed in just shy back at the dock.
We decided to see if our luck was any better with the tilefish. On our first drift...oh no…dogs! Next, a few seabass. Finally someone hoisted up a tile. Ok, right species. It wasn’t hot and heavy, but the tiles started coming up one by one. With nothing close yet for Skip, he was excited when he thought he had hooked “the one.” We all cheered him on, when up popped a nice tilefish?…nope….a snowy grouper! Darn, where did that come from? No problem, Skip was thrilled with his first snowy! Ok, back to the drawing board. We began pulling in a nicer class of tilefish, and it wasn’t long before Skip boated his target…a respectable 10-pound, 7-ounce blueline tilefish. Mission accomplished! Congrats to our newest Expert Angler and freshly converted Paper Chaser!
We continued to pull in some nice tiles until Wes scored with his first ever blueline tilefish, which pushed to almost 15-pounds! Way to go Wes! We had several more citation tilefish up to about 16-pounds.
Ok we had one more goal, so we were off to fulfill Darren’s “assigned” mission. At first, he struck out with a few missed bites and mystery runs on cut bait. Finally, we knew he was in business when we looked over and his rod was doubled over with Darren locked on tight. Darren had his hands full, and when his 50-pound snowy popped to the surface…we knew why! All goals met!
I managed to hook into a 20-pound wreckfish, while Danny also caught another nice wreckfish. We ended up with several tilefish to around 16-pounds, two snowy grouper to 50-pounds, and two wreckfish to 20-pounds, a bunch of seabass to almost 5-pounds, and several citation-sized EELS.
A great day with a lot of “high-fives” and BIG smiles…even from Darren!
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