Florida Fishing Under Fresh Gale Conditions (01/23/17, Lauderdale-by-the-Sea, FL)

What's up, fellow Blog readers?

Here is my fishing report for January 23rd, 2017. The statistical fishing chart was updated as well.

Location: Anglin's Pier

Time: 1:00 a.m. - 3:00 a.m.

Fishes caught:

-- 1 White Grunt (Haemulon plumierii)

-- 4 French Grunt (Haemulon flavolineatum)

-- 1 Lane Snapper (Lutjanus synagris)

-- 1 Blue Striped Grunt (Haemulon sciurus)

-- 1 Smallmouth Grunt (Haemulon chrysargyreum)

-- 1 Tomtate (Haemulon aurolineatum)

-- 1 Sailor's Grunt (Haemulon parra)

Video:

Below are the highlights for this fishing session:

My 8th outing of 2017. Don't forget to watch it in HD quality (1080p60)! If you enjoy watching my videos, please support my YouTube Channel by subscribing to it. More likes and more subscribes = more time to make videos! :)

Summary & Photos:

First evening fishing in Lauderdale-by-the-Sea, and Mother Nature was already not so forgiving. The weather down there was totally nuts, folks! Albeit warm, winds were going 35 mph+, which is why my flight got delayed by two hours due to "extreme weather conditions." The sweet part is that my airline -- JetBlue -- reimbursed me with 25% of my airfare because of those unforeseen circumstances. So, thank you very much, JetBlue! 

Anyways...Upon arrival, I had two choices: I could either sleep in for the night and go fishing in the morning, or I could go fishing right away. Being the fishing freak that I am, of course I chose the second option. Hah.

I arrived at the Anglin's Fishing Pier around 1:00 a.m.. I purchased some good old squid and went straight to vertical jigging. Since the wind was so strong, I decided to tie a single size #10 Mustad hook, above a 2 oz. river sinker. I opted to do that over the traditional high-low rig, so that I could actually feel the bite better with the fresh gale around. :) 

A few casts later, my first victim of the night came up:

Fish #147. My first Florida fish of 2017: a White Grunt

And a few more casts later, many other members of its family decided to show up as well:

Fish #148. The French Grunt

Fish #153. The Blue Striped Grunt.

Fish #155. The Tomtate.

Fish #156. The Sailor's Grunt.

And among all the Grunt catches, around 2 a.m., a lonely Lane Snapper decided to chew on the Calamari:

Fish #151. The Lane Snapper.

The highlight of the evening was definitely the fish below, which initially I wasn't able to identify. When I reeled the fish in, my initial assumption was that it was a Tomtate. Just a really weird Tomtate. Hah. After analyzing it better, I came to the conclusion that not only the fish wasn't a Tomtate; it was actually a new Species of Grunt for me:

Fish #154. The Smallmouth Grunt. Species number 151 for me.

As I always like to tell myself before a fishing session: "You never know what you will catch." Heh. The Grunts and Lane Snapper were totally expected, since they are the Species of fish that are active during the evening. What I didn't expect was to catch a whole unknown type of Grunt! That was pretty cool! Thus, in the end, it was definitely worthwhile to fish out there under fresh gale conditions. :)

Best of luck to all of us,

Long Days and Pleasant Nights!

Tight lines!

Sincerely,

Leo S. a.k.a. Extreme Philly Fishing