Jason Jones - February 7, 2015© Photos Posted by Mark Miller © Hi-Res Source
This started out as an overloaded trip but quickly trimmed down to a single person charter by Jason Jones of Biloxi in combination with a job to do some dive monitoring of FAD2 in FH-7 for Mississippi Gulf Fishing Banks. Two of my boys, Paul (19) and Luke (17) worked the deck and got in on some diving. We started by catching some live hardtails at CA-43 and then went to FH-7 to dive FAD2. We suspected that FAD2 had sunk to the bottom but found that it was indeed still floating and being functional. Air was added to boost it's buoyancy just to be safe. It was preforming well as evidenced by attracting a nice school of juvenile Amberjack. We then ventured further fishing some of the cans on the way to the MP243 Cutoff Rigs. We hooked up some AJs and a nice Gag Grouper there and Luke poked a Mangrove Snapper. From there we went to MP265 for Paul to try some Freedive Spearfishing. While Paul worked the area, Jason was very busy fishing hard and managed to catch a lionfish off the bottom on cut bonito. It ended up measuring 15.2 inches and weighed 1 pound 11 ounces, good enough for both a State and World Record. We then proceeded a little east to MP264 where Paul and Luke each got a nice Amberjack and I went in to do some underwater photopgraphy. It was somewhat comical as Paul used his buoy and float line and after about 20 minutes he finally poked a nice Amberjack. We were enjoying the view of his bobbing buoy when Luke swooped in and with a single breath went down with his reel speargun and stoned a slightly larger Amberjack and bear hugged him up to the surface. Then we had a nice photo session at the Rig. It was really a pleasure to see my boys being able to hold their breath and swim down to the 30 foot horizontal and sit down for an additional minute or so posing with their fish. I guess I really have raised some aquatic boys and that makes me very happy. We also found a shrimp boat in the area and hoped to find some Tuna, Wahoo, or Mahi around it, but all we got were bonito. We then pushed north toward home. It was a fun day that encompassed 174 miles, 98 gallons of fuel, and 13.5 hours.
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