If anybody took a look at the radar yesterday morning and thought to themselves, "Man, you'd have to be an idiot to be out there" I'd like to introduce myself. I'm Idiot #1. Idiot #2 was my friend Mike, and he picked me up at 5:45 AM.
We had loaded the kayaks (his a Prowler 13 or 14 and mine a borrowed King Fisher 12) and the rain began to fall about 5 minutes after we hit Capital Circle. Small, misty drops at first, followed by slightly larger sprinkling drops, until finally the drops grew to windshield-splattering size. We checked the radar on his iPhone all the way down there and had ourselves convinced that the little storm currently socking it to Panacea was mere moments from blowing NE and leaving us cloudy rain-free skies in it's wake. Perfect for the dawn top-water bite!
We got to the ramp a few minutes before sunrise and had our kayaks unloaded and rigged up in 10 minutes flat - Mike with his gimpy hamstring (a story he will have to tell you) hobbled along smoothly and for a couple of complete kayak angling neophytes we were all set to go. One small 2 minute setback occurred when Mike crammed the ice-filled insulated fish-bag into the forward storage compartment on his boat..."How do you plan to get it out of there to load up the fish we catch?" I asked... *light-bulb* It took both of us tugging on it for a few minutes to wrestle it out of there but we eventually managed to free it and store it where it belongs, right behind his seat.
Around this time it started raining...well, that's not right...what happened was the intensity of the rain that had been falling the whole time ramped up to the point where paddling away from the ramp seemed unwise - so the boats sat there and got rained on while we waited in the truck and reevaluated the radar image. The little storm that was blowing NE had taken a westerly swirl and was now moving off of Alligator Point and appeared to be gathering strength/stalling out. There was no lightning, nor had we heard the faintest rumble of thunder, so we convinced ourselves that one more line of sprinkles was going to blow through and we'd have smooth sailing after that.
Fifteen minutes or so later, the rain peaked in intensity then quickly tapered off to a gentle mist.
"Now or never" we said, and shoved off in search of scaly glory and dinner.
The wind was blowing almost directly in-shore so paddling across the bay to the far side where we had intended to fish seemed dumb...in case we needed to make a hasty exit due to lightning we decided to stay on the close side. We fished the edges of the grass islands and the channel due south of the Levy Bay Rd. ramp until we got to the mouth of the first big creek there. We paddled into that a couple hundred yards, fishing the edges and drop-offs as we went. The water in there was quieter and it seemed a little more protected from the howling wind.
Mike landed the first...no...second fish of the day in the center of that creek - a barely legal trout that went into the ice bag. I say that Mike landed the second fish of the day because I failed to mention this important tidbit...while waiting for the rain to clear at the ramp I heaved a top-water plug out into the abyss and landed a sweet 8 inch needle fish. "One-nothing, bi***." I proudly proclaimed".
So Mike has a barely legal trout onboard and then has an absolute MONSTER trout follow his gulp shrimp all the way to the boat but never gave it a taste. I never laid eyes on the fish, but Mike promises it was at least twice as long as the 15.01" fish he had on ice...at LEAST twice as big...
Anyway, one more short trout and then he lands all of our favorites...the sail-cat. I paddled over and gave him an assist with my fish grippers and we proceeded to putz around in that creek for another hour or so...lots of little bites, some monster bites, but no more fish landed. At one point I paddled out to the mouth of that creek and realized that the weather had taken a decidedly negative turn...the wind was whipping up white-caps out in the main part of the bay and the tide was ripping out the opposite direction....so we had sort of been lulled into a false sense of security...we didnt need any anchor or stake-out pole to hold our position....so how bad could the weather be? HA!
Both of us had spousal commitments that required us to be home by noon'ish so we figured we had 1 good hour of fishing to go...we manned up, checked the radar one more time, and decided to make a break for the Eastern part of the bay...whitecaps were breaking over the bow as we paddled across but once we reached the shallows on the opposite side, the water laid down nicely. Bait was working the edges there pretty heavily...something had the little fishies freaked out...I had no-luck on my gulp-jig so decided to just have some fun and switch over to top-water.
On went a MirrOlure Pop-a-dog that looks exactly like this...
Several casts into my new venture and I started to notice things happening...down the shore on my left I could see something chasing bait. First 50 yards away, then 30, then 20. I was parked right in front of a little cut in the shore at the mouth of a tiny tidal creek with tons of finger-mullet crashing minnows up along the edge. I figured...whatever it was that was crashing bait along the shore to my left would certainly make a pit-stop in this little hole...it just looked perfect...sure enough, a huge crash along the grass and a red's back was barely visible for a moment. I made my cast about 20 feet out in front of where I *figured* he would go, let the plug sit on top for a couple tense seconds....twitch, twitch, twitch...my dog-walking was flawless... reminiscent of bman, or skitterwalk, or JT ...somewhere between the 3rd and 4th twitch and right in the midst of my self-congratulation....*WHAM-O* - Fish-on! That sucker faught like a dump-truck...the drag was singing and I sang along - "HEE-YAAAH!"
It was a relatively short fight, and I was netless, so as the fish came along side the boat I gently cradled it in my hand and flopped it over the side between my feet and I took a deep sighing breath.
Mike scampered over and we shared the victory...for a couple of inshore-kayak newbies like us, it was an awesome moment.
All-told, she measured 23 inches and tasted like BUTTAH once we blackened it in the cast-iron skillet over a gas-flame while we sipped a tasty beverage later that night.
Here's a picture of the fish.
Thanks for putting up with my long post - just 2 keepers on the day - but for a day that probably should have never started - it ended perfectly.
This is my first "report" post, so I hope you enjoyed it - I hope to have many more in the future.
Thanks to bman for the Levy Bay tips. They proved useful! I've decided that kayaking is awesome, but a Hobie Mirage may be in my future if I keep this up. Anybody got one for sale?
i exclusivly tie loop knots nowadays.