Saturday -
Got off to a little bit of a late start for us and didn't hit the water until 7:30 - 8:00. It was overcast and windy and nasty looking - my favorite. Ran WOT to several miles east of the lighthouse to work a run on the outgoing tide. I spent the first 20 minutes of our drift cuttin off some powerpro, tying on new SPro swivels, new leader and a brand spankin new red ripper I picked up at JBT on the way. First cast I was impressed - never used the SPro swivels in tandem like that and daaaaaang buddy - if you ain't done that yet - you need to. Thanks again Reel Slow for the advice. Those red rippers are impressive on dang near any rig, but with the swivels and flouro it swam like a fish with any movement of the rod. I was very excited to give it a whole day and see what happened. Well here's what happened - On my third cast, the powerpro snapped. No knot failure. The braid came apart and the entire spool was ruined.
Note to self - read TinCan's notes to respective self and re-string reels more than once a year.
Lost my brand new red ripper and it was my only one. The tide was going slack by then so we looked for it a while. The wind died momentarily while the tide did. Unfortunately we didn't find it. we spent he next 4 hours running around to all sorts of random spots while I pouted about my $%&^$#%^ line and my $#%^%$# lost Nemire. We got up a nice creek on the incoming as soon as there was enough water. Rode the tide from outside the creek up the creek and all around the creek. Didn't see as many reds as we have been lately, but still plenty. AGAIN I got a lot of hits on the Johnson Minnow but no hooks (come to think of it I don't know if I've ever hooked one on those and yet I keep trying cause they get hit so often). I think Mojo was chucking 'ole clunky' aka a skitterwalk that I still swear up and down spooks the fish away in the more timid areas. I don't recall him getting a single hit on that. Deeper in the creek I switched up to redfish magics and the mysterious Mookbait! and got a couple of "am I stuck - no that was a fish...dang" hits nothin good.
Went to another creek and rode around. The tides were high and slackish. Predicted +3 plus torrential downpour made for easy navigation of places we normally can't get within a quarter mile of without walking. We got a little bored and frustrated and were seeing fewer and fewer fish, decided to see if we could traverse two creeks that are nowhere near connected on any charts. We alsmot made it too - ask Good Times how close we were - that's what we were doing when we saw them. Coulda made it in a smaller boat but by then the tide was falling and we decided best backtrack than get stuck on a falling tide.
Decided to hit up another spot on the way in for a few minutes to see if we could beat the skunk. I hooked up on a Mookbait! 4" paddle tail grubbish thing but at that exact moment the wind whipped the boat around and the bow went over my line - I was fishing from the stern. I choked and lost the fish. We went home smelling of skunk.
Sunday
...we took my boat out, did some of the same things. Bought another red ripper on the way out that day as well. Didn't lose that one (yet). Got in the middle of a bunch of tails on the outgoing, all juuuuust out of casting range. tried poling toward them but the water was too shallow. got nothin.
Stopped on some rock-laden deep holes just after low slack and let sheepshead steal some frozen shrimp for a while - that was fun, but no catches. We tried gulp to see if maybe they would get the hook. They hit the Gulp the same way as the shrimp for the first 3 minutes out of the package. After that I might as well have been throwing pantyhose. Nutthin. Once some water came in we left that and hit a creek mouth a little earlier than normal. We got near the mouth and the biggest school of mullet we ever seen out there was zig-zaggin every which way under the boat. The really cool thing about these mullet was that after about 5 seconds we realized they were the redfish kind and not mullet at all. Poled the boat over to the grass line and stuck it in the mud. Threw back over that area with frozen shrimp, spoons and tried gulp after running out of shrimp (only had maybe a dozen after playing with the sheepshead) Gulp got hit once or twice but no hookups. spoon got lazy-bumped once or twice, shrimp got inhaled. I think Mojo got a hit on some kind on either a top-dog jr or ole clunky - not sure which. Mojo got a nice one on a dead shrimp - I chucked one out before grabbing the net to get his. While fumblin for the camera, my pole bent over in the rod holder - in a mad dash I grabbed it and yanked the hook right out of its mouth post-haste...dangit.
That was 2 of our last 3 shrimp - we made our way about 200 feet up the creek, water was deep again, fish weren't where they normally were, and we were both fishin lazy, so we called it and came home around 3:00. I got skunkified again but Mojo got a nice keeper, so that's the first slot fish between the two of us in like 3 weeks - so that was something. Nice day on the water, back at the fort I remembered what sucks about summer, and it's the cluster-whatnot at the ramp. so an hour or so later we got my boat out and went home. Exciting part for me was, we did almost 30 miles in my boat on *gasp* ONE TANK OF GAS!!!
Mileage is getting better every trip since Waivel fixed the ignition and timing etc and I got the new tach giving *useful* feedback.Water temps were a full 10 degrees colder than previous weekend at low 60's - OAT 45-75 depending on time of day - Wind - just enough to be annoying but not horrible for more than 5 minutes at a time both days. Almost all the action we got, as well as the actually landed fish were in water 2 feet or less.
Can't wait for SJB tomorrow and yah this was a long one but hey I figure most of you who read this will be at work on a Friday, so what else are ya gonna do - work?!?
Little after sunrise Saturday mornin:
Finally a slot red!:
