St. Marks, 5/11/04

[dbplug]

I might be gettin' the hang of this chase. Took one of my new neighbors with me. Learned quite a bit from him.

Got to the Fort at about 8:15, headed east of the lighthouse a few miles. Stopped in 6' of grassy bottom, put the trolling motor in, set the auto pilot north at about .5 MPH.

Freelined shrimp was the best ticket, followed by topwater mirrolure 54M, black back/orange belly, then candy corn w/FB, then E. Chicken. Nothing on White/red, silver, or gold. Water was very clear to 9'.(think scallops)

10:00 to 11:40 bite was on, 16 trout, only two shorts, most 17"-18" range, one 22". Floated oveer some structure in 3', saw a HUGE sting ray, being followed by what looked like one legal size cobia, followed by another Cobia that looked to be about 5'. Threw a mirrolure at him but nada.

Turned the trolling motor around and headed due south back to deeper water, had a pin freelining and a "special cut tail" from a pinfish that I could not describe hanging off the back of the boat, got a 20" Smackeral on the "special", and then a Cobia started playing with the pin. He would take it, run, let it go, play with it again, let it go, and on and on and on. Took about three minutes for him to play it 50 yds to the boat. He was within 5 feet of the boat still messin' with us. He was 4' easy. Very exciting, very aggravating, but mostly exciting. One day I will get one.

Bite was alittle slow
Tally 14 legal trout, kept two
3 ladyfish
1 small rock bass
5-6 pins
1 mackeral
0 stockwells

[Chalk]

0 stockwells

Keep at it DB, WTG....

[creech]

Must be nice to be able to go fishing in the middle of the week.
Sounds like a nice day on the water.

[wevans]

WTG shure makes me get the itch ta be out there

[dbplug]

Creech, you have a sales job, hopefully outside sales. Sometimes ya' just gotta go. PS May 19th looks excellent.

Wevans, hows the red dot???

[wevans]

DB, LOVIN IT I've had a few foulups on the line "suspect my fault" but it has landed 20 or 30 fish so far with not a single problem

[dstockwell]

0 stockwells

[Aucilla]

Whew! Gotta love it!

[Sea Gurl]

Dbplug,

What was the depth when the most trout were caught? Sounds like you had a nice day. Goods news!! Did you go past Grey Mare, if you don't mind my asking?

Sea Gurl

[CSMarine]

Good fishing db. I've seen your "Auto Trolling" set-up in action. Moves right along. We catch a good many fish on Pinfish tail. (Special cut tail) I grew up hearing it called "Shiner tail." Many years back, most locals didn't call them Pinfish. They were known as Shiners.

[dbplug]

SG, very near grey mare. most fish in 3-4.5 feet.

CS, that is exactly what my fishing partner called his special cut. shiner tail. Do you leave the spine in either cut?

My neighbor is a very interesting fellow. An artist of great renown. He paints a lot of saltwater themed paintings. He needed a bateau boat for a subject and found an eldery black man who still builds the boats. He still lives in our area, was talking about building a 16' for 380.00 material, 400.00 labor. He also does a 20' I am going to try and find some more info on this(keeping chalk in mind)

[Sea Gurl]

DB - Thanks for the depth info. Hope I get to try for them this weekend - glad you had an encouraging report.

CS - I've have only heard them called "Shiner Tail" also. We use them if the bait fish has expired before being used but you know all that!

SG