I meet him over at my parents' house, across the street from the boat ramp and we head down to catch some bait. Nothing swimming bigger than his little peepee, so we decide to catch a bunch of the little crabs that are scurrying around the boat ramp. An hour and a couple of toe pinches later, we are off and running. We get to his spot and other than a little Sheepshead, nothing going on. The sun is starting to go down and we make an executive decision to run across the bay and fish a little cut in Destin that we know about.
We make the run across and can't tell where we are going because none of the channel markers are lit and the sand has shifted like a mofo since the hurricance. We finally find the place and start checking out lights. Not much going on in the first couple of spots. We drift down the line to a row of charter boats and I pitch an Exude dart to a piling. I twitch it once and BLAMO! All hell breaks loose again. I'm having flashbacks of Saturday night like one of those Vietnam vets. The Post Traumatic Stress Disorder was still in effect. My spool starts singing and my rod is doubled over and my line is heading for the next piling.
This was not making me happy. I tightened down the drag and put some heat on him. I knew I was going to break him off before he would get me in a piling. My brother started up the boat and moves it back into the channel while I am putting HARD pressure on this fish. I stopped him about a foot short of the piling he was shooting for and got him to turn into open water. After a couple more little runs, I get it boatside. Brother nets him up and he's in the boat. A 9.5lb Redfish!!! It was 26 inches and FAT as a hawg. I was so pumped and finally felt my redemption. My brother pulled a nice 12 inch flounder off of the same light after we got settled again.
We fished a couple more lights and found a dock blowing up with trout. I got a nice hit on the Exude, but he struck a bit short and didn't get stuck. My brother missed one right after. As we were joking around about it, two idiots at the house shut the light off on the dock. We were pissed and asked them what we were hurting for fishing there, blah, blah (we may have told their dog that his owners were a bunch of
well loud enough for them to hear). Anyway, we moved on. We caught a few more trout and missed a couple more fish. All trout were 20inches or better. They had been eating well in this little bayou. As we were heading out for the night to get back home, we decided to try one last dock. As we shut the motor off, I flew the Exude past the light and watched in awe as a 24 inch trout came blazing out of the shadow and blew the water up on my bait. I got him in the boat just as my brother started to throw down with a nice 5lb Redfish.
We had a great night and I am glad I went. I didn't like getting home at 1:00am, but sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do. All fish were caught on artificials tonight, which makes me feel better. And, I am officially loving the Exude Dart, in the Natural Shrimp color. My brother is making sure that I buy him a few packs the next time I go to BPS. I WILL MAKE YOU BELIEVE!!!
Some pictures:
"Blair Redfish Project" Spooky picture
***only a few crabs were injured during the filming of this fishing trip (we forgot about them)
