Lanark 04-19-2003

[Tom Keels]

Me and my pawinlaw hit the water about 6:30, wind E 10-15k, seas 2-3, nasty chop. So much for 2 feet or less. We started on DI reef and trolled up two nice blues on mack trees. Anchored and chummed and caught about 2 dozen pinfish in hopes we could go grouper fishing. After about 45 minutes of that we stuck our nose out to see what the seas were like. We could ride the troughs out to 40 feet and trolled some good bottom and caught a suicide rock bass on a stretch 30. Marked some more good bottom and got anchored and stayed about 30 minutes with nothing to show for it. We could not take the pounding anymore.

Went back to DIR and anchored and chummed again and floated live pins while we ate lunch. NOTHING FOR AN HOUR. We said screw it and started drifting throwing nylures tipped with the green glitter fishbites. Nearly every cast got struck by spanish or blues. We fished for about 2 hours making several drifts and caught more than 50 spanish and 20 or so blues. Most spanish were in the 20" range but we managed 10 good ones to 25" and 6 blues to 18". Also caught one 17" trout at the reef. We saw some very nice spanish and got cut off by more than a few. They would not hit wire. Only 40 pound flourocarbon and ONLY if the jigs were tipped with the fishbites.

It was a long day of agony followed up by 2 hours of fun. We left the ramp at 3:30. Water temp inshore warmed from 69 to 73 during the day. Offshore was 67-69.

[tin can]

It was rough this morning. But it sunds like you and pawinlaw worked on the spanish pretty good. We couldn't find them out of St. Marks.

[Tom Keels]

The water is a whole bunch clearer over there. We could easily see bottom in 10 feet. How long a run from the St. Marks is DIR anyway? Only 25 miles from safewater bouy.

[tin can]

The water is clearing at St. Marks. I could see bottom in 5 ft. yesterday.

It's 38 miles from the fort to DIR. You can be there in an hour and a half. Or, we could take the Champion and be there in less than 40 minutes.