Starting off a 2 day fishing trip in two separate spots with a last minute notification that your meeting moved to a location an hour away from it's original location should have told me things were going to go south. But I made it through my day and managed to wrap up a little early to sneak out of the office and stay my drive to Tallahassee to use my Hilton Honor points for a room instead of giving my money to Shell island. I managed to make it a single block before this little adventure decided to get interesting. Crossing under the red light I watched my power pole deploy into the road, turns out that bump in the road was enough to blow out the pressure line. After ratchet strapping the power pole to my console I got back on the road and called looking for replacement power pole hydraulic fittings and no marine parts dept between Douglas and St Mark's had them, luckily the hydraulic shop in Valdosta was able to rig up a solution to get me going so big thanks to Dylan and Doug. So I met up with my crew at the Tru and we headed to the Whataburger to grab supper. The Hampton inn on Capital circle is the better choice, the Tru parking lot is not meant for 3 pickups pulling boats but I digress. After getting a game plan together and finding no takers for meeting me at the NWR gate at 6, I set out on my own before daylight.
Knowing it was going to be a sketchy launch, I was pleasantly surprised with how much water was actually in the basin at the lighthouse ramp at low tide on a Friday morning.
But luckily the stott craft can get fairly skinny and I had redfish on the mind and a particular oyster bar picked out.
And God's majesty was on display on the way out
Unfortunately I completely blew it with my choice of oyster bar, I could have swore it didn't uncover at low tide and I was wrong.
And then the fog rolled in
This is also about the same time I also found out my navonics map was off by about 100 ft and what was supposed to be 6ft at low tide was low enough I had to get out and push for a little ways.
But I eventually got since water and ran to meet up with the other boats in my bunch to catch pinfish to head out and try and see if we could find a cobia.
I pulled up to my first spot and chunked out a pin fish and started playing with my new slow jigging pole and caught a rare gag grouper
Them my next drop got to be a little expensive, a rather large Spanish decided to smack the big and the 20lb leader was not up to the task. Retieing lead to another similar result and going to a heavier leader stopped the bites.
Then one of the other boats in the group pulled up and proceeded to drop down a pinfish and find what we are convinced was a very willing Jewfish and he had quite a fight and actually got him pulled out of his rock until tragedy struck and the rod exploded.
Unfortunately very soon after this the spot lock on that boat snagged some line and sheared a pin before it got shut off.
At that point I decided to head in since I had to be in Keaton by 4 and get a burger from cooter stew
Getting back to the lighthouse ramp however proved to be a little more tricky than I figured as my starting battery chose death in the boat basin but luckily I could start the boat with one of my trolling batteries, funny how it made it just long enough to be out of warranty.
I had to be in Keaton by 4 to take a friend of mines 13yr old fishing for his 13th birthday and it was a complete surprise to him. So he barely slept and as someone interested in marine biology I wanted to give him a mixed bag of fish.
So we headed out to get him a red first thing
The reds cooperated but were all under slot so we decided to head out to look for trout and managed to get him on a trash fish bash. He caught short trout, remoras, puffers, and lady fish.
He managed to fight 2 Spanish but they both got off and the only thing he didn't catch was a shark. He even got to experience the Pogo stick at deal's.
Even though he didn't get any fish to take home, he had a blast and definitely got to see a little bit of everything you could catch on the flats and he's ready to go again already.
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