Date: Feb 8, 2008

From time to time when I'm not booked on the flats skiff, I will hire out to guide on private boats that visitors have trailered down to the Keys. This week Russ Nelson and wife Donna from New Jersey hired me to speed up their learning process for deeper water fishing in the Lower Keys area. Russ displays a black grouper weighing approximately 30 pounds caught on February 8th off a wreck in the Gulf of Mexico north of the Lower Keys. In the background I am shown with a rod bent nearly double with what turned out to be a goliath grouper that weighed approximately 50 pounds. Goliath groupers, formerly known as jewfish, are a protected species and the fish was released after being de-hooked.