Had the pleasure of having Dean, Owen, Danny, and Logan join me for an open boat jigging trip. The fog was thick but we left out a dark thirty and pointed her for the blue water. Once we hit the 30 mile mark the fog started to break and we were enjoying the beautiful morning sun. The seas were bigger than forecast, and really started to stack up as the day progressed. Air temps got into the mid seventies with bright sunshine offshore, while inshore it was cold and foggy most of the morning

The first stop was in 69 degree and 200 ft. and it was on. For the rest of the day the guys enjoyed constant action on aj's, blackfin and false albies, and Dean's very first endangered gag grouper.

Danny decked a stud blackfin that was a good 25 pounds, Owen stayed in the bow and fought fish til' arm cramps started taking him out of the game. Dean toughed out the day with the green monster knocking on his door, but kept lunch down and fought fish til' he had no more to give. Logan was the damn energizer bunny, he cranked fish all day non stop, and was ready for more when we pointed the bow for home.

It was a great group of guys and it was a blast sitting back and watching all four guys hooked up at once time and time again.

Had the pleasure of having Pete and Joey from Long Island, Gregg from Raleigh and my son Stephen from Pa. on board for a day offshore.

The plan was live chumming , however, the mullet that were in the marina for the last month vanished almost overnight. There were some of the 12 inch + size fish, but the finger mullet were gone. Furthermore, my castnetting skills left the marina also, things weren't looking good for the live chumming.

Not to be discouraged we pushed off in the cold water and headed about 55 miles out to the break. The temp went from 56 to 68 degrees in a few hundred yards. Things looked right, except for an empty sounder. We tried that beak a bit and then pushed offshore a bit more and picked up a nice wahoo on the troll. Still no life showing on the sounder we headed in a bit to try some jigging.

We found a few patches of fish and it was drop down and everyone would hook up with AJ's .Gregg scored his first grouper on a butterfly jig which was released to see another day. There was some serious tackle testing going on with the Long Island crowd determined to break something....everything held together. The drift was screaming over 3.5 kts so it was tough to stay on top the fish. The drift was too fast to get down to the triggers so it was pretty much a pull fest on AJ's. The ocean gave up some great visuals of dolphins, turtles, and dozens of big hammerheads and other sharks cruising the surface.

I seriously enjoyed the day even though the fishing was tough. We cruised back at 40, and opened her up to 50 once we were back inside and made it in before the sun went down. A beautiful day spent fishing in T-shirts in Feb. cannot be beat !!