Mexico Beach 8/4, 8/5
Posted: August 8th, 2006, 11:46 pm
Well, it has been a while since Nuts and the chip off the Old Nut got out on the "Grouper Grabber" for some adventure on the high seas, but we caught a break last week before school had the chance to bring summer's adventures to a close. After having two friends fish the Mexico Beach/ PCB areas with great success over the last month, we decided to stay away from the sharks and hard heads on the flats and try our luck fishing a little deeper water than the usual Apalachee Bay offerings. The seas had been flat the past two weeks according to the reports we had and we knew that with Dog Days upon us, hot still air would be our biggest problem. Got off work Thursday afternoon and loaded the boat after doing a few Honey dos and left Macon around 10 pm with Little Nut. Made it to PSJ arond 0400 and slept a couple of hours waiting for the tackle shop to open. . Blundered right into the Half Hitch just as they opened. Bought about a C note's worth of attractive tackle to tie on various lines and got a little advice from the incredibly nice folks there. Mexico Beach was just as I remembered the last time I had been there some 43 years when I was two! With a little trial and error found where I could launch the boat and soon Little Nut and I were heading out to the bouy line to find some live bait to go along with the frozen smellu stuff in the cooler. Well, the flat seas were gone and so were the easy to find bait pods. Breaking in a new color GPS/Sounder I saw what looked like some bait and the old trusty Sabiki brought in one threadfin shad. After trying several bouys we went out ot the Car Body Reef area and quickly boated a nice hard tail and that was it. I noted a small patch of dark clouds back toward shore bding blown in by the sea breeze I was sure. OK, time to troll. We trolled a stretch 25, a clark spoon, and a dolphin rig. After nothing for a while, I decided the skirted dolphin rig might do better with a cigar minnow on it. Hm, those clouds were building a little, but since the wind was blowing on shore at about 10 knots, they would be no problem. Going from one set of bottom numbers to another we saw a small clump of weeds on the surface and glided right by that with an immediated fish on noted on the dolphin rig. Just a chicken, but our first dolphin.
He promptly hopped over one of the other lines two or three times creating a reel mess, but I netted him for Little Nut. After getting the lines untangled I noticed that little clump of clouds was now a big dark mass hovering much closer to us. No problem as the guy at Half Hitch and my friend had directed us to a couple of spots about 20 miles out or so which would be way past the southwestern extent of the storm. I informed little nut that we would come back for more Mahi later, after the storm had passe on shore, that we would now head out to try trolling for some Wahoo with one of those huge plugs we had purchased that AM. We headed out for about 10 miles at a fair clip; far enough to realize that the southwestern tip of this little cloud mass extended to the Yucatan Penninsula! It had also grown quite dark and was no longer moving onshore but offshore, where we were. I informed Little Nut that there was no cause for worry, we would just put on life vests, a rain suit for him, lay all the lightning rods, I mean fihsing rods in the boat, sit on the bottom of the boat and go for a little rollercaster ride back into shore. Of course about this time lightening starts popping off to the west and back to the east. There was nothing but blackness about to envelope us. I noted and area between where the lightning seemed to be where there was nothing but white. Prefering torrential rain to electricity we headed in via this route.. Within a few minutes the temp dropped a precipitous 20 degrees or so and the pelting(rain and hale) began. With Little nut in the lee of the center console on the deck I squatted behind the console from 11:45 until around 1:10 keeping the boat headed into the 6-7 foot waves. At times the rain was so hard I couldn't keep my eyes open.
The whole experience was some where between what Dorothy and Toto experienced and what the guys on that sword boat in the Perfect storm wnet thru. Well, after an hour and 20 minutes of prayer, the sky lightened up and the rain subsided. We found ourselves near the end of the bouy line where the Kings were reportedly being caught when the weather was nice. Our blue runner was still alive and after impaling myself several times to assertain the sharpness of all six af the trebble hooks on our stinger rig I managed to get the bait fish on and over the side. I was using a Lewe's saltwater baitcaster with about 180 yards of 12 lb test on a well matched rod. The Hardtail went swimming almost stait down about 100 feet from the bouy in around 65 ft. of water. In about 30 seconds I could feel the twitches of his tail on the line as he obviously frantically tried to swim for his life. Then the line started smoking off against the drag. At this juncture I instructed Little Nut on the need to chase the fish, that is point the boat in the direction the rod was bending and go. After nearly spooling us, we began gaining a little line back and I handed the rod over to Little Nut. He fought the fish for a good while 'til his back was about finished and he handed the rod back to me for a bit. The fish came up and dove again under the boat. It looked from dead above to be the man in the brown suit,
however after stemming another run and getting a better look we knew it was a nice King!
After around 20 minutes Little Nut had him ready for the gaff!
That was enoughfor one day as the rian threatened to hang around until we got the boat back on the trailer! Then it cleared off and the seas dropped to nothing!
A huge storm came thru that night and stirred thnigs up until around noo when things smoothed out about 25 miles out. We caught one nice Spanish and managed another chicken dolphin and a 16 inch Tripple tail(our first!) from a weed line we found on the way back in.
While my son caught these fish all I could manage was a trophy hard tail which I rigged on the stinger hooks again after donating about one unit of my own blood to the deck of the boat(I almost had to kill the blue runner to get him on the hooks!). There would be no takers this day and we quit around 5:00 pm after logging about 70 miles with the old Yammy hummin nonstop from 0800 until then.
We packed it in and headed home early the next day.
Can't wait 'til next time.
Nuts
He promptly hopped over one of the other lines two or three times creating a reel mess, but I netted him for Little Nut. After getting the lines untangled I noticed that little clump of clouds was now a big dark mass hovering much closer to us. No problem as the guy at Half Hitch and my friend had directed us to a couple of spots about 20 miles out or so which would be way past the southwestern extent of the storm. I informed little nut that we would come back for more Mahi later, after the storm had passe on shore, that we would now head out to try trolling for some Wahoo with one of those huge plugs we had purchased that AM. We headed out for about 10 miles at a fair clip; far enough to realize that the southwestern tip of this little cloud mass extended to the Yucatan Penninsula! It had also grown quite dark and was no longer moving onshore but offshore, where we were. I informed Little Nut that there was no cause for worry, we would just put on life vests, a rain suit for him, lay all the lightning rods, I mean fihsing rods in the boat, sit on the bottom of the boat and go for a little rollercaster ride back into shore. Of course about this time lightening starts popping off to the west and back to the east. There was nothing but blackness about to envelope us. I noted and area between where the lightning seemed to be where there was nothing but white. Prefering torrential rain to electricity we headed in via this route.. Within a few minutes the temp dropped a precipitous 20 degrees or so and the pelting(rain and hale) began. With Little nut in the lee of the center console on the deck I squatted behind the console from 11:45 until around 1:10 keeping the boat headed into the 6-7 foot waves. At times the rain was so hard I couldn't keep my eyes open.
The whole experience was some where between what Dorothy and Toto experienced and what the guys on that sword boat in the Perfect storm wnet thru. Well, after an hour and 20 minutes of prayer, the sky lightened up and the rain subsided. We found ourselves near the end of the bouy line where the Kings were reportedly being caught when the weather was nice. Our blue runner was still alive and after impaling myself several times to assertain the sharpness of all six af the trebble hooks on our stinger rig I managed to get the bait fish on and over the side. I was using a Lewe's saltwater baitcaster with about 180 yards of 12 lb test on a well matched rod. The Hardtail went swimming almost stait down about 100 feet from the bouy in around 65 ft. of water. In about 30 seconds I could feel the twitches of his tail on the line as he obviously frantically tried to swim for his life. Then the line started smoking off against the drag. At this juncture I instructed Little Nut on the need to chase the fish, that is point the boat in the direction the rod was bending and go. After nearly spooling us, we began gaining a little line back and I handed the rod over to Little Nut. He fought the fish for a good while 'til his back was about finished and he handed the rod back to me for a bit. The fish came up and dove again under the boat. It looked from dead above to be the man in the brown suit,however after stemming another run and getting a better look we knew it was a nice King!
After around 20 minutes Little Nut had him ready for the gaff!
That was enoughfor one day as the rian threatened to hang around until we got the boat back on the trailer! Then it cleared off and the seas dropped to nothing!
A huge storm came thru that night and stirred thnigs up until around noo when things smoothed out about 25 miles out. We caught one nice Spanish and managed another chicken dolphin and a 16 inch Tripple tail(our first!) from a weed line we found on the way back in.
While my son caught these fish all I could manage was a trophy hard tail which I rigged on the stinger hooks again after donating about one unit of my own blood to the deck of the boat(I almost had to kill the blue runner to get him on the hooks!). There would be no takers this day and we quit around 5:00 pm after logging about 70 miles with the old Yammy hummin nonstop from 0800 until then.
We packed it in and headed home early the next day.
Can't wait 'til next time.
Nuts
