It's Saturday the 2nd of February 2002 at 8 a.m.. The forecast called for early morning fog and lots of sunshine in the afternoon. Mean low tide at 12 noon and winds out of the NW 10-15 mph.
Saturday's trip was with my father Dow Chancey and my two brothers Hank and Josh. My dad only comes down when Snook season is alive and kicking, so you can guess what the target species for the weekend was going to be. We had planned to leave at 6:30 in the morning but the fog was very dense. We ended up waiting until 8 a.m. until some of the fog had burned off. The fog did not clear completely until the afternoon hours. Our plan was to catch bait at the Causway and fish under the bushes for some Snook and Redfish before the tide became to low. However, our plan did not pan out, we spent over an hour hunting for the first bait at the Causeway and never found even one, which is very rare for that spot. At approximately 10:00 a.m. we decided to head to the Picnic Island area to chum some bait. Bait was slow there as well, we only managed about half a well full of pinfish, white bait, and mullet. We left the bait spot at 11:30 a.m. and headed for the bushes in a fairly deep cut under some mangroves. Armed with a frisky pinfish I tossed my bait near a fallen tree and wham!! about a 25 inch grouper busted my bait but I missed the hookset on the fish. I baited up again and this time slam!! under the tree and broke off. All in all I used 3 rigs on that tree without one grouper to the boat. We fished on down the mangrove shoreline and not another hit. We decided to head back to the spot where the grouper were wailing on our baits. I tossed the first bait to the hole and there went another rig. My brother Hank tossed his bait up there and what do you know, another break off. Those grouper under the trees are nearly impossible to get out of the bushes before they break you off. We were not using light tackle either, I had a 7.5 foot Fenwick rod with a 4000 Shimano Sustain loaded with 30lb. Power Pro and 50lb. Vanish Flurocarbon leader, but those fish were not even phased. I refused to believe that I could not land at least one of those grouper and eventually I did. He was a huge one of 17 inches. Yeah I know but he still fought well and he was also the first fish of the day and at least he was a grouper and not a catfish. I tossed two more baits in the hole and was broke off two more times.
We finished out the day fishing some of the other grouper holes which had been performing very well in the passed few weeks. The wind was another story however and those spots were made nearly impossible to fish. We decided to head back to the bait spot and prepare for some night action. Fortunately the big white baits were there and we caught plenty of them. Soon we called it a day and decided a Night Blasts trip would be our best shot at some snook action.
