Watched a ton of Ed Ward, he's a master for sure. This is the video I studied to learn myself
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__oUQ5OEq8g
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__oUQ5OEq8g
We did a charter while in the keys, ran about 60 miles out just to bottom fish for grouper and snapper. It was good for a group (bachelor party) and we caught a lot of fish but if I was solo I'd probably fish the flats or go lobstering.
Lot of work for fish. How you gonna keep them with broke fridge?
We leave in a week. Planning on doing some diving while we're there as well and lobsters are back in season. I'm sure we'll hit the Hump at least one day and depending on the bite we may go back. But yeah, we plan on hitting the flat as well.
We hit the humps only 1 day. Some of the days we had questionable weather and being rookies on a boat we did not risk it. We had a 24' single engine Cobia and even in 2' swells we were taking a bath.
We never hooked up at the humps. We saw 5-6 fish caught, but apparently the day we were there the fishing was just not good. We were rigged just as you mentioned. We spend the majority of our time in the Delta Shoals area where the depth dropped to about 80-100'. We caught yellow tail mostly there on live pilchards. We also fished a lot in Vaca Cut - this is where we caught our pilchards daily. We loaded the boat with muttons, school master and mangroves here. Most of our lobster came from the gulf side in an area called Bamboo (something). It was about 6-miles north of Vaca Cut and only about 12' deep max. Speared a monster black grouper here as well.
We fueled-up one day in Boot Key and took advantage of the free 100lbs ice deal. While fueling we saw a boat sink across the harbor in shallow water. It was still there the day we left. We also had several meals at Sunset Grille.