23" RED! Friday Night Swoope Ramp 8/22

Left our house after dinner around 7PM. We get to the NSB Bait & Tackle shop to acquire 2 dozen mud minnows. The guy there hooked me up with more than 2 dozen...awesome. Arrived to the ramp around 9PM. It was a new moon and tide was up high. Water was super clear, you could see every detail on the bottom. Quickly setup a rod and got a hit along the mangrove trees. It was probably a snapper but I couldn't get it to connect on the hook. Cody caught a 9" mangrove snapper all by himself using a live mud minnow. It got a release back in the water without a photo. OOPS!
The blue crabs were in the area, caught a small one that released itself on the lift. And then caught a huge male bluecrab. It let go on the lift but luckily the water was so clear I could still see it. Dropped the bait down, the crab grabbed it again, and used our landing net to catch it. The shell was 6" from point to point, so the crab was overall much bigger. Boiled him up when I got home, here's a picture of him sitting in our sink.



Then 10:30pm rolls around and I hook into a nice fight using a live mud minnow. As I'm fighting it, I had to move down to the floating dock so Cody could try to get the landing net in the water. Secured the fish on the dock and realized I just caught a 23" redfish! Other people were around to witness my catch so I was feeling good. :)





My son Cody was more interested in the hermit crabs. We found three new hermit crabs. One had a really bad broken shell, so I took it home and put a new empty shell of similar size in with it. Sure enough it swapped shells and is now in a safe home. Here's a few pictures of our new tank mates.