circumnavigation of St. Joe Bay
Posted: March 27th, 2008, 5:41 pm
Had a good plan put together for Wed. Chalk and I would leave the city landing early and head to points South letting the Northeasterly wind ease us along with the help of the push pole and look for Reds in the early morning light. I was first up on the poll. We eased along in what seemed perfect conditions for the task at hand. Only problem was, No Reds! After poleing probably 2 miles down the line we decided to run a little further and look at some new bottom. It was Chalks turn on the platform and after about 500-600 feet of poling I hear " damn, the pole is stuck". I turn around to see him bent over trying to pull it out of the mud and start to lose balance. I told him to just let it go! That is about the time he got on the back of the platform and his pulling was actually pushing the boat out from under him. After a less than graceful dismount to avoid a foot up the arse, he stuck a perfect two point landing......in about 18" of mud. Thought about pictures for a second but figured Karma would frown on me for it. Did I mention it was about 43deg. That boy was cold 
Had to endure Chalk in his BVD's while he put on a spare rain suit 
Anyway, since that flat was blown now we moved on and fished the rest of the Bay to no avail. We started seeing Trout just before lunch with a few Reds here and there. Had one trout follow a toad within a rods length of the boat. He literally had the marabou of the tail on his nose, but he pushed it out of the way and blew out. Guess he smelled the sausage biscuit I had on my hands from breakfast
. Had a few reds follow but no takes.
Pulled up on a pothole and thought we saw a huge school of mullet( several hundred) in a dazy chain. turn out to be catfish. Never have seen that before. Must have been 7-8 feet across. That nice NE wend turned all th0e way around the clock from North to west to south and finally settled in at Southeast about 10-15. Sight fishing was out s 3o we gave up about 2:30 and switch to spinning and casting. Chalk landed a red a little later and a good over slot red about 30 min. later that he proceeded to pull the hook on
right at the boat as I was preparing to land it on the boga. A few blue fish later it was time to go. About 7:30 we were sitting at Dockside drinking ice cold Yuenglings and eating a Grouper basket trying to figure out what went wrong. My Idea is that Baygator sore mouthed all the reds last week 
Good times were had, valuable experience was gained, very little gas was burned, Chalk got my boat filthy with mud. That is all
Had to endure Chalk in his BVD's while he put on a spare rain suit Anyway, since that flat was blown now we moved on and fished the rest of the Bay to no avail. We started seeing Trout just before lunch with a few Reds here and there. Had one trout follow a toad within a rods length of the boat. He literally had the marabou of the tail on his nose, but he pushed it out of the way and blew out. Guess he smelled the sausage biscuit I had on my hands from breakfast
. Had a few reds follow but no takes. Pulled up on a pothole and thought we saw a huge school of mullet( several hundred) in a dazy chain. turn out to be catfish. Never have seen that before. Must have been 7-8 feet across. That nice NE wend turned all th0e way around the clock from North to west to south and finally settled in at Southeast about 10-15. Sight fishing was out s 3o we gave up about 2:30 and switch to spinning and casting. Chalk landed a red a little later and a good over slot red about 30 min. later that he proceeded to pull the hook on
right at the boat as I was preparing to land it on the boga. A few blue fish later it was time to go. About 7:30 we were sitting at Dockside drinking ice cold Yuenglings and eating a Grouper basket trying to figure out what went wrong. My Idea is that Baygator sore mouthed all the reds last week Good times were had, valuable experience was gained, very little gas was burned, Chalk got my boat filthy with mud. That is all
