A flash of red: the elusive red snapper strikes ageain.

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It's a beautiful summer morning in Destin. My girlfriend Tracia is on the boat with me and we're bottom fishing for snapper by drifting over a wreck in about a hundred feet of water. Between our drifts, we put out lures on spinning tackle to troll for kingfish and bonito while making the short run back to start the next drift.

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As we get back to one spot, I cut the engine and drop a bait down while Tracia brings in the lures. As I'm concentrating on my line, she gets slammed super hard, nearly rips the rod right out of her hands. Wahhhhahhhaa goes the drag, straight down toward the bottom--wuh wuh whu whuu! She puts her game face on right away and starts fighting it, I crank my bait up and start snapping some photos.

"What the heck is it, Ryan?" she asks. With a big smile, I'm watching in awe. She starts tightening the drag to see if she can slow it down, and then finally it stops. We're both amping because we know it isn't a porpoise...but what is it? We were trolling a Rapala X-Rap in 100 feet of water. When she hooked up, the fish went straight to the bottom.

The next couple minutes are a buzz of guesses as she hoists and cranks it off the bottom. Finally it comes up, the first thing I see--a flash of red out from under the boat. I thought it was a massive red grouper.

She gets it closer and pulls it up, and it's a humongous red snapper! I can't believe it. I snag it with the gaff and throw it in the boat, and then the high fives fly. It takes the tape at 33 inches and just less than 30 pounds. Won't even fit in the cooler.

Crazy thing is, we end up with another snapper, a 20-inch mangrove, using the same technique. It was just one of those crazy days. We probably said, "1 can't believe it," no less than 100 times that day, just loving every minute.