Groupers?

LOL!

Call Jeremy Wade ;-)

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Originally Posted by ironman172

I hear stories like that about the cat fish in the Ohio river, being big enough to eat a man :D

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My grandfather worked at the phone company and knew divers that worked for Alabama Power. One said he was working on something below the Jordan Dam and he claimed a catfish bumped into him so big he thought it was a large piece of drift wood. Needless to say he refused to ever go back down there again.

about two years ago a tropical storm hit and it was right after the storm we went and fished west beach pas and caught 6 or 7 gag grouper along thw sea wall they were all about 16 to 17 inches long.

Legend around here is that Lake Tenkiller has catfish the size of VW bugs by the dam.

Seems like (if memory isn't too bad faulty) that some time in the late 80's we had a glancing blow from a hurricane but not a major hit. I went fishing on the pier and there were groupers and/or snappers being caught on the end (I cannot remember which species for sure other than they were deeper water fish 'messed' up by the storm). Anyone else remember that?

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Originally Posted by Dave

Seems like (if memory isn't too bad faulty) that some time in the late 80's we had a glancing blow from a hurricane but not a major hit. I went fishing on the pier and there were groupers and/or snappers being caught on the end (I cannot remember which species for sure other than they were deeper water fish 'messed' up by the storm). Anyone else remember that?

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Though I was only a one year old and thus did not experience it, I have heard this story many times. It was Elena in 1985. My uncle Paul was headed out on a charter when he saw someone pull up a grouper from the jetties. They stopped at the 3-mile barge and filled their fish box with gags. He came in to drop his charter off, got a few of his 6 brothers on as crew, then went out and filled the boat again. Next stop, fish market. Everyone else was doing the same thing and the price of grouper soon bottomed out.

I remember as a kid in the 90s fishing off the dock at Jubilee Landing across from Ono and catching grouper after grouper, nothing bigger than a foot long. Though we stayed there for a week every year, only that once did I catch those. There must've been a storm right before our stay but I can't remember.

Last year, we caught a goliath on the 3 mile while shark fishing in the deep sea rodeo. My uncle Larry caught another on the trolling alley (6 or 8 miles out I think). I heard of a few others caught on the trolling alley too; they are coming back. All released since they are prohibited of course.

Yeah Dave that was Hurricane Elena in Sept 1985.
It sat on Florida's Big Bend grouper grounds for a couple of days and then moved NW over Dauphin Island sweeping thousands and thousands of gag grouper onto the Alabama coast.
Most were 2#-4# with a few twice that size, but there were some 'freight trains' too we never saw!
I saw the "Cutty Shark" make many a trip back then,
even fished with them several times ;-)

I caught those grouper for a couple of months after the storm at Perdido Pass along the seawall.

It was soon after when (gag) grouper became regulated first by size restriction, them stricter bag limits.

Thanks guys for the confirmation. I remember that storm now, it turned east and then turned back west. I remembered the fishing more than the storm track until I checked your link #'r! lol

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Originally Posted by Psychobilly

Legend around here is that Lake Tenkiller has catfish the size of VW bugs by the dam.

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Now where have I heard that story before?

there's always gag's caught in Pensacola bay along with decent red snapper