We left Valdosta and met up with another friend with his boat and crew of bride and her friend for the rainy ride south. The women equaled the guys this trip and I have to say we would have been outnumbered by fisherwomen if my bride hadn’t just gotten off a 12 hour night shift at the hospital. So kudos to the ladies for joining the crazy boys on such a dreary morning, weather on the ride down was miserable until @ Old Town where we stopped for a ladies break. The rain had stopped and temps were climbing and overcast is good right, so our spirits were lifting.
We dropped into the Suwannee and picked up some bait shrimp just after low tide, took the only tip I had from two different sources and headed toward the location without ever having fished the area and only a little local knowledge at hand. I soon found some decent bottom and we set the hook and flung some shrimp toward my find. Our buddy boat was setting up around the corner and we were going to see who scored first blood and shout to each other.
I don’tthink I even had time to get a shrimp on and Larry was bowed up with a drag puller. He’s going to keep he says and after I net the little rascal Larry’s bride Doris jinxes him and says he’s not big enough, well sure enough we stretch and pinch and near as we can tell its 17 and 15/16th and going back to grow a hair. Doris is next to hook up and a 15 inch rat goes back. Contented that I at least put us on fish I think we may manage a keeper sooner or later and after I finally get a jig in the water and hook up to a 7 in monster mangrove snapper. I finally get a good pull and bring home the first 18.5 inch keeper for the crew!! .
I buried the jig and didn’t want to waist time messing with it so I cut it off and threw the fish on ice and went to tying on a new jig head
Well knowing full well that I shouldn’t I couldn’t resist putting my teeth on the leader after wetting the knot and went to biting off more then I can chew and caught the biggest lip on the river! Yep you guessed it my new sharp little jig right in the lip and the barb was under the skin so I had to push it through so Larry could cut it off! Guess that red got even when it wasn’t just his blood on the bottom of the boat! I grabbed some ice to suck on and put out another shrimp with little more comment then a thank you to Larry. Heck the fish were biting! I guess the blood ritual worked because I managed two more keepers on about the next two casts, I think there may have been a mango in between and the limit was quickly filled before we could even get a radio call off to our buddy boat. I didn’t matter much though because battery troubles prompted us to make the move to go help him out.
Well this is getting lengthy so I’ll finish off by thanking another couple friends, two brothers who showed up later in the day and showed us a back door to a little trout hole where they managed one 17 in keeper trout and we had to leave it at that. Had a good time with some great friends and the only real rain we hit was in while driving so the making the call paid off for our boat anyway.
Tight lines,
Joe
