BigBendFishing.Net

One of my Uncles spent a lot of time with me when I was younger. He took me bass fishing, bream fishing, squirrel hunting, and deer hunting. Since this past December, I have been pestering him to come down from Mississippi and let me put him on some redfish. He finally agreed to come down this past weekend.

My plan was for us to stay at our place at Beacon Hill. That way we'd be on the coast, minutes from the fishing holes. I beat him down to St. Joe bay Thursday, he would be in late that evening. So I launched the boat from the city ramp to do a little scouting.

1st stop, I was working some flooded grass edge when movement caught my eye. Yep, tails. Appeared to be 8 redfish working through the flooded grass. I cast a spoon just beyond them and began the retrieve. The spoon passed through the school unnoticed. Crap! Try again. Same result. This time I grabbed a spinning rod with an Exude RT slug rigged weedless. Made the cast, placing the jerkbait just ahead of the school. I let the bait lay. When the school was 1 foot or so away I gave it a little twitch. Amazingly the reds completely ignored the bait. This continued to my frustration until the reds finally disappeared. Little did I know these fish foretold of our luck to come in the proceeding days.

To be continued..........

I'm curious to hear how this ends...

I'm anticipating the scowls and shrieks of horror- but I have to ask....
Did you tried Gulp or live bait?

I was wishing I had some blue crabs or even some (swallow hard) GULP.

I continued on, headed down to some holes that generally hold redfish. On the way, I was thinking there seems to be a lot of water. This was 10:30-11:00 a.m. and the tide should be falling, but the water just seemed to be hanging there.

Used to be I hated a falling or a low tide on St. Joe Bay. I now realize that is the ideal tide when fishing SJB. The problem back then was I didn't know how to get around in the low water. Now even when the tide is really low, I can still get back to specific holes where fish concentrate during low water conditions.

So I get upwind of some nice potholes and decide to power pole down. The wind is pretty fierce and is turning boat control to crap. With the power pole down, I begin to aggravate the potholes 1st with topwater baits, then if no luck, I would drag a spoon through them. Using this technique, I was able to put a few reds in the boat.





I ended up landing 5 and missing another 3.

I noticed a familiar boat in the distance. Took out the cellphone and placed a call. Sure enough....it's Eerman and he and his guest are having a pretty good trout day, basically doing the same thing I was but without the assistance of the power pole.

To be continued.....

Sorry you didn't have more luck,but i bet your uncle appreciated your efffort.

Well, with Eerman's trout report and the 5 redfish I landed, I was feeling pretty good about our chances on Friday. I conducted a little more reconnaissance then packed it in.

My Uncle got in around 7:00 p.m. Then Chalk dropped in after a flycasting lesson over in St. Joe. We waited for Chalk to leave then I fired up the gas cooker and big boiler. Low Country Boil was on the menu.

Here's the recipe......
small red potatoes
onions
lemons
Sausage
Beer
corn on the cob
shrimp
plenty of salt
and Zatarain's Concentrated Crab and Shrimp Boil

Start out with enough water in the boiler to cover all your ingredients when they've all been place in the pot. Use 1 beer per 1lb. of shrimp. Adjust your water level for the addition of the beer.

I use 2x-3x the the recommended amount of crab boil. Add the recommended amount of salt.

Halve the lemons, squeeze the juice into the mixture, then throw it in the pot. I use 1 lemon for every 1lb. of shrimp I intend to cook.

Quarter the onions and throw 'em in the pot.

Throw in your sausage and potatoes and bring to a boil for 6 minutes.

Throw in the corn and bring to boil for 6 minutes.

Throw in the shrimp, bring to a boil and then cut off the cooker. Cover and let soak. The longer it soaks the spicier it gets. I generally can't make it more than about 15 minutes.

To be continued.....

Waiting for Chalk to leave

Telling how to boil shrimp in a fishing report...I can tell where this is going

I just answred a questions I was going to ask-
the Zatarain's Concentrated Crab and Shrimp Boil is the liquid stuff.


I have only ever used the dry spice bag.
How much of this stuff do you use per gallon?

Understatement to say that I'm keeping tuned to the developing story -I'll be fishing St Joe Friday & Saturday next week. Thanks

Still Rockin the Glove?

shaping up to be a good weekend...reds, shrimp boil and family

Did i hear you say "GULP" ???

Did you come back through Quincy by state road 12 on Sunday, if so I was behind you for a minute then you checked out on me around the Quincy Airport . I didn't know that Chevy would pull a boat like that

The Low Country Boil was the highlight of the day. We packed down the food, the hell with the diet, and hit the sack with high hopes for Friday's fishing.

Friday morning we arrived at the city ramp in PSJ before daylight. We took our time getting the boat in the water, then just as the dawn was breaking, we headed out. 1st stop wasn't too far from the ramp and actually pretty close to the area where I had seen the redfish tailing on Thursday. High tide was well before daylight so there was a ton of water. The wind was blowing but not too bad and actually just right to drift the bank. As we started our drift, I quickly explained to my Uncle how to work a skitterwalk and he got the hang of it pretty quickly. Over the course of a few drifts we picked up a good many trout in the 14"- 16" range. Catching trout that size always concerns me because I don't feel trout that small are going to be anywhere around big redfish or trout if they can help it. We kept a few of the trout around 16" just to be sure my Uncle had some fish to take back with him.

We moved on down to another area where Chalk and I have always done well on redfish. No love there either. More of the same short trout. By now the tide was beginning to trickle out and I knew from Thursday it was not gonna get much better. We ran further down intending to fish the holes where I had had success with reds the day before. On the way down, I remembered Chalk asking if I had fished an area that had been good in the past. I had not tried it on Thursday, so we made a quick stop there to give it a try. The water seemed perfect. The depth was around 2' The bottom was broken up with patches of sand and there were happy mullet all around. On the 1st drift we caught a couple more short trout then I had a decent red roll up on my topwater bait. Quickly I power poled down and coached my Uncle on where to make his cast and then how to work the bait. He worked it perfectly. I was thinking while holding my breath, "This is gonna be it". Nope. The redfish never showed again. Well no big deal I thought. We'll get the next one. We drifted the area a few more times catching more trash fish and short trout, the packed it in to continue on down to our original destination.

To be continued.....

Kinda reminds of the NeverEnding Story...where's the Big Nothing

bman wrote:I just answred a questions I was going to ask-
the Zatarain's Concentrated Crab and Shrimp Boil is the liquid stuff.


I have only ever used the dry spice bag.
How much of this stuff do you use per gallon?

Just follow the directions, though I generally use 2x-3x as much as they recommend.