A unique website dedicated to fishing information from Florida's Northern Big Bend. This includes the area from the Econfina River west to the Apalachicola River
Years ago, (in the mid eighties) I was stationed at Tyndall AFB, in PC. My buddies and I would fish an outgoing tide at night from an old closed bridge so that our bait (3-4 in live blue crabs) would float toward the new bridge. The strong tidal current would suspend or bait near the top of the water. We found that if we positioned ourselves just right we could get our bait to a spot illuminated by the lights from the new bridge. The monster reds would circle like sharks under this light waiting for the tide to carry some bay morsel to them. They would be just below the surface so the any thing floating by would be silhouetted by the light. This tactic ptoduced numerous monsters and countless misses and broken hooks - we had to muscle them a bit to keep them from running to the bridge pylons.
We did this for a couple of years and always with amazing results until the reds were overharvested by the gillnetters. From the looks of the red population these days, my guess is that a boat (the old bridge is closed to fishing now) positioned just right on the bay side of the bridge leading to Tyndall would be in for an out-of-the-slot treat.
If anyone over in PC gives this a try, let me know how it turns out.
My cousin and some of his friends used to go to the old Hathaway Bridge and fish at night. They would go by boat and get out on the concrete waterline footings under the bridge. He said they would catch the big Reds, Tarpon, and some keeper Groupers. He always tried to get me to go, But I never did. Tough to go fishing all night now, he is married with kids and so am I.
If we were all crazy, Wouldn't that make us all normal.
I can remember, as a child, waiting for what seemed like hours for the old drawbridge to do its thing. Don't remember whether they called Hathaway back in the day...
Derfish, You must have been fishing from the Old Dupont Bridge there by the base. We used to catch a lot of Mullet off of that bridge throwing our castnets.
If we were all crazy, Wouldn't that make us all normal.
Yes, that's what it was called the Dupont Bridge - you jarred my memory. It is still there, but I guess it is not safe enough to allow people to fish from it any longer.
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