Meet at the Fort?

[Chill-N-Grill]

Who wants to meet at the fort in the morning? I want to go fishing so bad that i;m considering freezing my but off......

[Reel Cowboy]

Man, you can have that jazz. I've got to put a little flooring down in the bathroom tomorrow.

[Mook!]

We'll be out around 7-7:30, but prolly going to put in at the lighthouse to cut that 10 miles of 45mph in the sub-freezing weather off the journey. If you're out there, we'll be the ones in the other boat.

[Bow'd Up]

Ya'll catch'em up..........toooooooo cold for me

[Redbelly]

Reminds me of that old Patsy Cline song...."Crazy"....

[Littoral]

I'd guess 3000 other people this morning were crazy too. Amazing.

[lordsfisher]

I'm anxious to hear if you guys were even able to launch trailered boats. And if you fished if they were hitting.

[Mook!]

Mojo and I left the lighthouse a little before 7am, and it was about as cold as avertised (21F on the thermo-meter and breezy). Headed out to the east flats and saw the first boat of the day between 11-12 on on our way back toward the river. Launching the boat (180 Bay Scout) was slightly sportier than normal but didn't require a crowbar or driving the trailer off the end of the ramp, although he did have to back the tires up well past the end of the south lane - it's much shorter than the north side lane at the lighthouse FYI. We hoped to hit a creek mouth and ride the tide out for reds, but the deepest creek runs we know of between St Marks and Aucilla were landlocked; we did get in to the most black drum I've ever seen in one place just chilling on some rocky bottom in maybe 10-12 inches of water (thought they were sheepies till we got right up to em)- too busy trying to turn tail before we got stuck to even attempt to catch em up though. We ended up ditching the flats/creeks plan and heading up wakulla river after about 5 hours of almost no signs of sea life. Saw the second boat of the day around the north end of all the oyster bars at the mouth, but the fort parking lot looked pretty full. and we saw plenty of boats up the wakulla and St Marks rivers, almost all upriver from the intersection. We ended up covering about 35 miles on the GPS from a little east of cobb rock to the 98 bridge up the wakulla and points in between, and saw fewer than 10 verifiable redfish all day, all of which were in warp speed mode no interested in stopping off for a bite. A couple in the 1 foot and shallower water out in the flats and maybe a few in deep holes up the wakulla. Didn't even get a respectable hit all day between the two of us, but ended up spending way more time moving around trying not to get stuck and trying to find redfish than actually fishing, so I'm sure we could have done better with a better plan or maybe a kayak... or maybe if only we had Gulp and a popping cork... Did see the most black drum and sheepshead I've seen in ages today though, and quite a few bass way up the Wakulla, many larger than I usually see up there - big enough that I thought they were good sized reds from far away. It was totally worth the trip though; I was able to add 3-4 good pages to my multi-volume novel on how to NOT catch redfish in cold weather.

[lordsfisher]

mook, glad you got out there. Seeing those black drum would be cool. I worked around the house and read about fishing... your day sounds better.