Fishbuster Charters’ Captain Dave Hanson reported,"Monday morning, 5/5, I fished 21 miles west of New Pass with Mark and Jackie Travis and their daughter, Alexa. The family did very well fishing for snapper with live shrimp, boxing twenty lane snapper to 14 inches and releasing lots of lane shorts. They also caught and released fifteen red grouper, three of which were irritatingly close to keeper-size, at 19 ½ inches! The larger of the red groupers bit small blue runners, and the smaller ones bit live shrimp. Seas were refreshingly calm, following a few days of windy, rough conditions.

Tuesday, 5/6, I headed offshore about 25 miles west of New Pass with father-son anglers, Doug and Wade Shephard, who have fished with me before. When we started out, seas were a lot choppier than what had been predicted, but they did calm down some as we got further out, and we had an awesome day of fishing! We caught two limits of keeper red grouper, all between 21 inches and 27 1/2 inches. As if that wasn’t enough excitement, we hooked, battled and released an 8 ½-foot hammerhead shark that nearly killed all three of us before we got it to the surface! We took some video of that, and kept fishing, that is, after we recovered some strength in our arms. The red grouper all bit on bait-fish, but we used live shrimp to lure the snapper, and we caught twenty keeper lane snapper to 17 inches to add to the box. We released an equal number of smaller lanes.

I was off the water Wednesday and Thursday. With our seasonal residents heading north, it is that time of year when fishing trips aren't daily anymore. Looks like it's time to do annual home and boat maintenance chores on my off-days--I'd rather be fishing, for sure, and I will be whenever I can!
Friday morning, 5/9, I fished inshore in lower Hickory Bay with brothers Craig and Jeff Sable. Using live shrimp, the guys caught two nice black drum at 19 inches and 26 inches, along with a keeper sheepshead. They released five stingray and an 18-inch snook.




I was scheduled to fish all day offshore on Saturday, 5/10, but the winds and seas kicked up and caused a caution to be issued. It wasn't safe or comfortable to take a family of six out there, so we had to cancel those plans."