Saturday July 18 St. Mark's Report

[Ted in Tallahassee]

Went out from St. Marks with the wife unit. Put in at the fort at about 7 am, FOGGY, was a little concerned it might be too thick to navigate but it was OK once I got into the river and it seemed to dissipate pretty soon afterwards. Manatees everywhere, saw a giant gator swimming in the river too. Passed the lighthouse and headed east. Like everyone else noticed, bait everywhere. Stopped off the spit at the east side of the entrance to Big Cove and as we drifted pretty fast southwards I started throwing a Skitterwalk while wife threw a red headed jig with a Gulp New Penny/Chartreuse tail under a Cajun Thunder popper. We did that for a good hour, finally drifting to about 4 feet. The biggest surprise was the lack of trout. Two weeks earlier the kids & I were getting regular hits, lots of short trout, but not today. I got a big sailcat and wife got a couple flathead cats, a smaller sailcat, and a shark. (Sailcats went into the box!) We also put a big spinner in the rod holder with a chunk of pinfish on a thin steel braid leader under a float for bigger shark or ?? and let it drift. Big hit on that rod and in comes a 19-3/4" trout! I also had what was likely a keeper trout right up to the boat but it fell off as I was lifting it into the boat. I'd rather risk that than spending another 10 frustrating minutes untangling the net from the skitterwalk and a gyrating fish. Overall the fishing action was kinda slow.

Headed over to the telephone pole at the stake line sorta off Grey Mare rock, bounced some Gulp jigs on the bottom, nothing doing. Then ran over to what looked like the D-Day invasion fleet on the horizon to the scallop boaters, and we did some scalloping ourselves. Good way to beat the heat, and it's pretty fun in its own right. What I do is pull the boat around holding a short piece of the anchor rope as I swim, with the anchor hanging off one of the front hull handles. If I find a good spot I drop the anchor, or more often just let go of the boat and swim around if it's calm, which it was. One of the benefits of a little boat.

By the time we got about two gallons of the critters we got back into the boat and relaxed, basking in the sun and taking in the bad '80's music blaring from various boats around us, and trying to un-see a couple of disturbing tattoo-covered fellow boaters our eyes happened to inadvertently fall upon.

Overall a good day, better than coming back with nothing.

[Blue spinner]

sound like a good day on the water with your wife ,
thanks for the report