St. Marks 2007.09.30
Posted: October 1st, 2007, 1:26 am
Headed out for another go today. Stopped by TC's house on the way and he cut me a heck of a deal on a GPS identical to the one I lost, even had the same waypoints in it, so that was pretty awesome. Thanks TC...good deal on the trolling motor too.
It was another day where finding water was harder than finding fish with a negative low tide smack in the middle of the day, and once again I was concentrating slightly more on the new used boat than the fishing, but it did pretty well today so I was able to spend a few hours actually going after fish.
I spent the first hour or so running around both sides of the channel south of the bird rack looking for something good on the bottom in water deeper than 3 feet. I finally found an area of 5-7 and threw topwater for a while, netting more ladyfish and nothing else special. There was quite a bit of VHF chatter about catching spanish macks and inability to find trout.
I decided to move around slowly and look for some bottom structure, and thought what the hey, chucked out a gold spoon and trolled it while I drove around. I got over some decent looking bottom and depth for a good mile or so and decided to turn around and start a drift over it.
The second I put the motor in idle, the pole with the spoon bent about as far over as it could go and the line was flyin out of it. I picked it up and yanked - second or two later, very nice kingfish jumped up. Gave me one heck of a fight for about 45 seconds, then returned my spoon to me in near mint condition with no fish on it. Bummer.
After that I ran a few drifts, didn't get much of anything at first, but once the tide started to turn, I got into a 12" fish extravaganza. I had non-stop action again for about 2 hours; smallest fish - 12"...biggest fish - 13" I'm starting to think I may indeed be the king of the foot-long. In all I had about 10 trout make it to the boat and a couple small spanish macks. No good catches today, but the boat didn't break or run out of gas so I was happy.
This one didn't even bite the hook...
...and I'm not as good at self portraits as some of these other fellas.
It was another day where finding water was harder than finding fish with a negative low tide smack in the middle of the day, and once again I was concentrating slightly more on the new used boat than the fishing, but it did pretty well today so I was able to spend a few hours actually going after fish.
I spent the first hour or so running around both sides of the channel south of the bird rack looking for something good on the bottom in water deeper than 3 feet. I finally found an area of 5-7 and threw topwater for a while, netting more ladyfish and nothing else special. There was quite a bit of VHF chatter about catching spanish macks and inability to find trout.
I decided to move around slowly and look for some bottom structure, and thought what the hey, chucked out a gold spoon and trolled it while I drove around. I got over some decent looking bottom and depth for a good mile or so and decided to turn around and start a drift over it.
The second I put the motor in idle, the pole with the spoon bent about as far over as it could go and the line was flyin out of it. I picked it up and yanked - second or two later, very nice kingfish jumped up. Gave me one heck of a fight for about 45 seconds, then returned my spoon to me in near mint condition with no fish on it. Bummer.
After that I ran a few drifts, didn't get much of anything at first, but once the tide started to turn, I got into a 12" fish extravaganza. I had non-stop action again for about 2 hours; smallest fish - 12"...biggest fish - 13" I'm starting to think I may indeed be the king of the foot-long. In all I had about 10 trout make it to the boat and a couple small spanish macks. No good catches today, but the boat didn't break or run out of gas so I was happy.
This one didn't even bite the hook...
...and I'm not as good at self portraits as some of these other fellas.
