Bare Necessities: St Augustine offshore 5/31 09
Posted: June 1st, 2009, 12:13 am
Didn’t get to make it over as planned to attend the annual GOFC Spring Tourny at Cedar Key. An 8 year old birthday party invitation kinda nixed that (still bummed). So we headed off shore on our first east coast bottom bumping trip for us since our move and the kid’s first trip offshore off St Augy. The goal for the day was twofold: 1) Try to find/develop some numbers for future trips and 2) put my children on some fish. Was hoping for some beeliners, blacksea bass, maybe even a cobia if we could find some reef numbers or hard bottom-whatever, as long as it kept the kids happy.
Getting a late start we started running the Ditch headed towards St. Augy at 1100 hrs.
On the way out we zig-zagged a bit and hit a number of reefs I had public numbers for but only found two numbers quite a ways off the public numbers I had entered in the GPS. I understand it’s gonna take some work, patience, and time on the water.
Turtle close enough to touch
On one of the numbers we found around 100 ft we anchored up. First out was a fat live mullet on a flat line. About 4 minutes later Casey is first up to bat as our flat lined mullet was streaking across the surface with something hot on it’s tail frothing the water. The unknown fish won and Casey had his hands full with an AJ on 20 lb test.
Casey up at bat
After a bit of a drag pulling Casey’s first reef donkey was on the deck. He couldn’t of been any happier as it was a species he’s wanted to catch for a year now. It’s already a great day!
Kaitlyn was up next for the boat rod and when another fish picked up a live bait she was fighting it with the rod against the gunnel (whatever works for her). I keep the drag pretty tight on the flat line and with braid she had her hands full.
After a bit of give & take her first AJ ever get’s its photo taken with a couple of happy kids.
Team work
On the last LARGE live bait we were fortunate enough to have a cobia take the bait. Although it was Casey’s turn to grab the boat rod he graciously allowed his sister Kaitlyn to take the rod and fight the cobia since she had never caught one. I thought that was pretty awesome! After a short fight the cobia was in the boat and I was yelling “Slack, Slack, Slack!!” as the line was tight and the cobia didn’t want to go into the opened fishbox.
Kaitlyn’s first ling!
One thing I would say about today’s artificial reef fishing is that I’ll have to get used to how close other boats fish these artificial structures. It’s tolerable I suppose but when a large 30+ft blue, wide beamed ProLine boat with a tall tower named Get Cha Hook In …… (couldn’t make out the rest of the name) dropped off two divers with spear guns up current of us I thought that was pretty inconsiderate. The diver’s bubbles came up under our boat and under the boat next to our side too. Surely that’s not considerate or accepted here? I dive too but would never do that to boats already anchored on a spot. I’m still a bit peeved. Tried to get a photo of the ProLine but we had depleted the camera batteries.
On the way back we stopped at two different artificial reef numbers I had found (course nothing on those numbers) and after a bit of circling we were able to find one artificial reef structure. Ran a total of 107 miles for the trip and we had an outstanding day on the water!
HooYah!!
Brian
Getting a late start we started running the Ditch headed towards St. Augy at 1100 hrs.
On the way out we zig-zagged a bit and hit a number of reefs I had public numbers for but only found two numbers quite a ways off the public numbers I had entered in the GPS. I understand it’s gonna take some work, patience, and time on the water.
Turtle close enough to touch
On one of the numbers we found around 100 ft we anchored up. First out was a fat live mullet on a flat line. About 4 minutes later Casey is first up to bat as our flat lined mullet was streaking across the surface with something hot on it’s tail frothing the water. The unknown fish won and Casey had his hands full with an AJ on 20 lb test.
Casey up at bat
After a bit of a drag pulling Casey’s first reef donkey was on the deck. He couldn’t of been any happier as it was a species he’s wanted to catch for a year now. It’s already a great day!
Kaitlyn was up next for the boat rod and when another fish picked up a live bait she was fighting it with the rod against the gunnel (whatever works for her). I keep the drag pretty tight on the flat line and with braid she had her hands full.
After a bit of give & take her first AJ ever get’s its photo taken with a couple of happy kids.
Team work
On the last LARGE live bait we were fortunate enough to have a cobia take the bait. Although it was Casey’s turn to grab the boat rod he graciously allowed his sister Kaitlyn to take the rod and fight the cobia since she had never caught one. I thought that was pretty awesome! After a short fight the cobia was in the boat and I was yelling “Slack, Slack, Slack!!” as the line was tight and the cobia didn’t want to go into the opened fishbox.
Kaitlyn’s first ling!
One thing I would say about today’s artificial reef fishing is that I’ll have to get used to how close other boats fish these artificial structures. It’s tolerable I suppose but when a large 30+ft blue, wide beamed ProLine boat with a tall tower named Get Cha Hook In …… (couldn’t make out the rest of the name) dropped off two divers with spear guns up current of us I thought that was pretty inconsiderate. The diver’s bubbles came up under our boat and under the boat next to our side too. Surely that’s not considerate or accepted here? I dive too but would never do that to boats already anchored on a spot. I’m still a bit peeved. Tried to get a photo of the ProLine but we had depleted the camera batteries.
On the way back we stopped at two different artificial reef numbers I had found (course nothing on those numbers) and after a bit of circling we were able to find one artificial reef structure. Ran a total of 107 miles for the trip and we had an outstanding day on the water!
HooYah!!
Brian
