Drug out in the morning and really didn't plan on fishing until the late afternoon, but my bud Jack was ready to go, so we pulled out the Ol' Pro and headed to St. Joe. Stopped by Micky D for breakfast, Subway for lunch samichs, Hit Blue Water for some live bait and license for my bud. Wish I had checked my live bait before I left the store, because I would have left that at the store
Eased the Ol' Pro in at the city ramp and the gal cranked and ran like she was young again. The tide looked to be full. It was a great day to be in God's outdoors. We had little breeze to begin with and NOAA had predicted the breeze would fall off. Ran to Black's Island and there sat another boat on my favorite drift pattern. Moved over some and drifted the fringe/broken grass. Bait fish were everywhere, but nothing was working them at all. The water was clear and I saw several schools of mullet and puppy reds. Nothing wanting anything we had to offer. I threw topwater and Jack fished with gulps. Pinfish were wearing out his gulp. I saw a couple of trout on the drift, but they were totally inactive. Pulled out and headed further back in the bay. When I put her on plane, the wind started getting up. Ran back and set up a drift on transitional water. Found the lady fish. We could have caught a zillion if I had stayed on that drift. Drifted through some blues and Jack had one on for a short while before it cut his line. We recovered the cork a little while later.
Moved over to shallow grass flats and noticed the water looked a little skinner than I expected. Water was too shallow to fish, but not too skinny for a 5-6' foot bull to be cruising around in
Had to work my way around to a deep cut to get out of the back of the bay. Ran and out and decided to anchor on a point to fish with live bait. Opened my bucket and was not happy with what I saw. The water in the bucket was merky and a lot of the bait was not live. Turned on my live well and dumped them in. As we were maneuvering to anchor, the wind started jumping up. I had set the boat to fish off the side toward some good looking fingers, but now the wind was such that all we could do was fish off the back. So much for NOAA!Jack pops up and says he wants to ride out to the outside beach. Well, I crank up and start to run inside of Black's island. Noticed the sandbar sure looked a lot more shallow than it should have after only a couple of hours from full tide. We started bumping and the wind was blowing in the right direction, so I shut her down and we ate lunch and drifted looking to see if there was any action on the edge of the sandbar. All we saw were mullet and what looked like a big school of 12-14 inch hardhead cats. I decided I would try to net a few, in case we saw some cobe's on the beach, so pulled out the new easy net I had purchased for my son to play with to learn to throw a cast net. It was only a 5 footer, but I couldn't make that sucker do anything but throw bananas. I tried to give it away at the landing and no one would even take the danged thing. Ran to end of the cape and by then the waves had built into good 3's with an occasional 4 thrown in for good measure. Passed two big net boats coming in as were going out. We hit the beach and I let Jack run the boat while I tried to spot cobes. He was new to the game and afraid to get too close to the beach, so we cruised along, but I didn't see anything other than a bunch of schools of blue runners and bait fish.
It was now about 2 PM and a several boats were coming back in from offshore. Ran back inside to see if we could fish along the Cape close to the State Park marina....too many folks already there. Headed to the ramp and at 4:30 Ol' Pro was resting on her trailer. Talked to several incoming boats and none had any better luck than we did. Cleaned the boat, washed our behinds and headed to Apalach for a good meal at the Apalach Grill.
All in all, it was a beautiful day outdoors and sure beat werking!