Keaton Beach Research
Posted: September 27th, 2008, 9:52 pm
Dad and I decided to do a little hands on fish stock research out of Keaton Beach today.
I was so excited about getting to go fishing agian I couldn't sleep so I turned on the debate and you guessed it
We started out around 8:00 this morning looking for some trout and reds. We looked and looked and fished and fished to very little avail. The stocks for next year look good as we caught a good many 12"-14" trout. The rock bass population looks to be doing just fine as well. There should also be plenty of pinfish for the next several years as we saw schools everywhere.
Around 11:00 we decided to run offshore a little bit and see if we could find some grouper, rock bass or even pink mouth grunts. Well we found the grunts and a few keeper rock bass
. We spent a couple of hours catching grunts and imposed a 10" min lenght to keep it interesting. We loaded the boat (almost) with probably 10-15 and got 4-5 rock bass up to about 15". 
We ran out of cut bait and Dad starting using New Penny GULP!. The grunts loved it. My mother-in-law loves them so I might get in her good graces. 
2:00 rolled around and we started trout fishing again. We started in about 6' of stained water just east of Rock Island. Dad was dragging a CT behind the boat and hooked a 17" trout. We decided to move in a little shallower and troll around some bars Barhopr and I found/fished this past June, I hadn't been there since then. I boated a 21" trout on a Catch 5
and Dad hooked a couple of short rock bass. We drifted to another bar and right off the bat I boated a 20" or so trout on the same Catch 5 . I tried top water for a while but got no love.
We called it a day at 4:00 and headed in for the long ride home. I had a great time on the water with Dad and we got a few fish for the freezer. Only issue of the day was a Penn 360 reel I've had for a couple of months just came apart in my hand in the middle of a cast
. Guess I'll have to go see Heath. 
I left the dig. camera at home so I'll get some pre-cleaning pics in the morning.
Thanks for reading.
I was so excited about getting to go fishing agian I couldn't sleep so I turned on the debate and you guessed it
We started out around 8:00 this morning looking for some trout and reds. We looked and looked and fished and fished to very little avail. The stocks for next year look good as we caught a good many 12"-14" trout. The rock bass population looks to be doing just fine as well. There should also be plenty of pinfish for the next several years as we saw schools everywhere.Around 11:00 we decided to run offshore a little bit and see if we could find some grouper, rock bass or even pink mouth grunts. Well we found the grunts and a few keeper rock bass
. We spent a couple of hours catching grunts and imposed a 10" min lenght to keep it interesting. We loaded the boat (almost) with probably 10-15 and got 4-5 rock bass up to about 15". We ran out of cut bait and Dad starting using New Penny GULP!. The grunts loved it. My mother-in-law loves them so I might get in her good graces. 2:00 rolled around and we started trout fishing again. We started in about 6' of stained water just east of Rock Island. Dad was dragging a CT behind the boat and hooked a 17" trout. We decided to move in a little shallower and troll around some bars Barhopr and I found/fished this past June, I hadn't been there since then. I boated a 21" trout on a Catch 5
and Dad hooked a couple of short rock bass. We drifted to another bar and right off the bat I boated a 20" or so trout on the same Catch 5 . I tried top water for a while but got no love.We called it a day at 4:00 and headed in for the long ride home. I had a great time on the water with Dad and we got a few fish for the freezer. Only issue of the day was a Penn 360 reel I've had for a couple of months just came apart in my hand in the middle of a cast
. Guess I'll have to go see Heath. I left the dig. camera at home so I'll get some pre-cleaning pics in the morning.
Thanks for reading.
