St Marks 4-11

[sundown]

Got out of Shell Island Wed about one...Had friend and his son in law and grandson from North Ga with me..Our first trip out of there this year..
We hit my first two stops and nothing...wind ok, fairly calm..Wondered what was the problem..few boats around.
I went way east and hit a stretch of bottom I like and we hit the fish..the tide was coming high by then and we started on the trout..caught a bunch..kept 13 up to 21". great afternoon..I told them not to expect it to be like this everytime ! Most fish caught on SWA's and gulps by buddies, I caught nearly all mine on topwaters..

Yesterday (Thu), we headed out at daybreak to the same spot..Rough ride for 7- 8miles to say the least...Water was rough almost on the bank with that southeast wind and the tide turning.. Had a buddy from Tallahassee come down so we had split up..Friend went with him so friend's son in law and grandson went with me...
Started slow ..caught and kept two barely legal fish to get the skunk out of the boat and then it really got slow..We stayed with it and around 11 started to pick up some fish as the tide started turning..good fish and shorts..To make a long story short, we started throwing back anything that we thought might require measuring except fish over 20" . Kept five limits between 17 and 25 inches between the two boats... Most were in the 18-19" slot..I caught the big fish just before full tide..He hung a good three inches over the 22" golden rule... They had gulps and I used shiner colored jerk baits and 7M mirrolures..

Headed back out this morning...It was rough and the same SE wind blowing about 15 mph I guessed...We caught quite a few fish both shorts and keepers...Kept a half dozen 17-18" trout...Slow to start with..Tide bottomed before noon although with no more movement than we had, you couldn' tell it so we headed for the hill....Fish caught on gulps again by buddies..I used mirrolure and shiner colored jerks...Brought a nice mess of fish home...I got mine iced down so gotta get up early and start cleaning em! Water temp all three days ran from 69 to 72 degrees....clear with light stain..

All in all, might have been the best trip I ever had out of St Marks..Didn't have a scale but yesterday we could have had a five fish limit from 19-25 inches long..dang pile of fish !
Got some pictures I'll post later if I can figger out the way to do it !

[BAD BEHAVIOR]

Sounds like a fine way to spend the week! Good trip.

[Good Times]

Great week of fishing!