When you going coastal?
Thinking about heading to Keaton Beach this Saturday. Sounds like everyone had some great catches last week at the tournament. Hope yall left some for me. I had promised Calvin that I would take him sheephead fishing - guess I should have join the fun with yall instead. Anyway, I copied below the report for my trip for last weekend.
Dave (ddb), Calvin and I went to a river near Jacksonville last weekend to see if the bait stealers are still around. We left Tifton early but didnt get on the water until around 10 am, were greeted by an out going tide with a couple of hours before low. Since its only a couple of days before full moon, the tide was screaming but we managed to get our bait to stay on the bottom long enough to get them to bite with the help of 1 oz weight but had to switch to 2 oz on a few occassion.
Waiting
but not for too long, it seemed that we left them where they were from last fall. After numerous "swing and a missed" I brought the first one in just in time before everyone in the boat decide to gave up.
Its a nice fish. I love sheephead fishing. If you've never caught one, imagine hooking up to a bream on steroid, except they will grow up to 10lb or more. This one was probably around 5-6 lb.
and of course Calvin follow suite.
Its a nice fish, about the same size.
And not long after that one, he was hook up again.
The cooler starting to loose sight of the ice after about an hour of fishing. Looking good
I keep telling Dave to set the hook right before the fish take the bait but being that he is used to trout fishing, he was waiting for a hit and that run before setting the hook. He would have done better had he listened. Here's the reason why - they bite so light that you barely hook them most of the time.
And this - barely hooked just long enough for us to bring it in. Despite the long net, we lost several right at the boat.
Took Dave a little while to get the hang of it but he managed to brought one in eventually.
The sheephead slowed down when the tide started to come in but the black drum decide to play. This one, a little more than 25'', almost broke my trout rod.
I caught one more and then Dave caught one as well.
Calvin wanted one as well - here waited patiently for the next black drum to swim by his bait
and hooked up, but it turned out to be a big sheephead, the biggest of the day.
Dave helped out on the netting
Calvin's personal best
The boga was bouncing between 8 and 9 lb
We ended up with 11 sheephead and 3 black drum on Saturday,
and I believe 9 sheephead and 2 black drum on Sunday. We didnt take that many pictures on Sunday as we only fished for half day and Dave took the other cooler home. One last picture of a catch worth mentioning - cant fish at Mayport (Jacksonville) and not report the catching of a Mayport grouper (or as Sam called it Captain fish on the Princess).
Thanks for reading.