Saturday morning I put in at the Saint Marks Light house at 6:15. Since the temp has been reaching the mid 90’s and showers were predicted for the afternoon I wanted to get an early start. It took about an hour to fill the live well with what I guessed to be around 4 dozen pin fish. My goal was to catch a few cobia and see if there was any mangrove snapper around. At the first spot I free lined out the largest pinfish in the well and it didn’t take long before I was hooked up. The fish went straight for the rocks but luckily he turned. After about 25 min I finally got a 57lb slob of a cobia in the boat. Since I was by myself I wanted to make sure he was good and worn out before I brought him in. I have made the mistake of bringing them in green before and I didn’t want to go through that ordeal again. Especially since I was by myself. Now it is time to try to catch some mangrove. I ended up only catching one about three lb and a bunch of small grouper. There was always a pin fish free lined out the back during this time which the Spanish and cobia seem to love. Ended up with 4 more cobia, 3 of them keeps and 5 large Spanish that I let go. There was only two other boats out there and they both decided it was appropriate to anchored up within 10 yards from me. At this I decided to leave. Went about 5 miles farther off shore and started trolling a few shallow diving plugs for kings around the bait pods. I only landed one in 14-16lbs class. By this time the wind had picked up and it started to white cap so I called it a day.
Sunday my wife wanted to go out. She likes to sleep a little more than I do so we didn’t get to the landing until 8:15. We stopped by one of the buoys to pick up bait and see if there was anything else around. We were successful with both. My wife proceeded to lay into a cobia while I caught some bait. Since I didn’t want to keep any fish we let it go boat side but it was probable 32 inches. We then headed for the shoals to pick up some more bait and whatever else we could find. Again while I was catching bait she caught a few Blue fish and one really nice trout. Probable 20 inches. From there we went out several miles past buoy 24 to some natural bottom. Since neither the tied nor the wind was very strong we drifted pins along the bottom. Ended up landing a dozen grouper but only two Reds were legal. Although I bitch about the wind sometimes it sure does get hot without it. We decided to go for a swim and then call it a day. All fish were released this day.
St Marks 13 & 14
Moderators: bman, Chalk, Tom Keels