4th July weekend Keaton Beach
Posted: July 6th, 2009, 10:45 pm
Took a former colleague who now live in Virginia to Keaton beach for a little scalloping and fishing. The kids had a blast snorkeling for scallop, though this year's crop were definitely less than last year.
We headed out the canal at 8.30 am on Saturday, managed to use the shortcut as the incoming tide was already started to come in.
After clearing the idle speed zone, we headed north and had the whole place to ourselves.......
or so I thought. About an hour later, the place turned into a Wallyworld parking lot....
Someone even managed to pull a inner tube weaving through all the boats.
Our scalloping crew, who managed to round up 8 gallon of scallop by a little after 1 pm, before it got too deep for them dive for them.
a happy crew
We then put the snorkels away, ran 4-5 miles away from the crowd and took out the fishing rods. We managed to put a few in the boat. Here's the bride with a fish on
nice netting
Not big but a keeper
Kedong with a cork down
fish on
and landed a nice upper slot fish
Kedong's daughter's turn to hook up. This on exploded on the surface as soon as the line came tight
again, nice netting work by Calvin
an over-slot fish
Our biggest fish for the trip at 23.5' , caught by Calvin dragging bait at the back of the boat
Kedong with our two over slot fish
We ended up with 8 on Saturday and 11 on Sunday.
The water temperature was 87. All the fish were caught in 5-6' water. They may be deeper as well but we didnt go any deeper than 6', however they were definitely not in shallower as we didnt get any bite when drifted to less than 4'. The scallops were pretty scattered, with most places we prospected only found singles and doubles, probably indicating that the spot has been picked over. Only on a few spots where we consistently found doubles or triples. So, all in all, the scallops are there, just need to take a little longer to round up a limit, but that's part of the fun. Hope everyone had a good 4th of July weekend.
The pro fisherman
We headed out the canal at 8.30 am on Saturday, managed to use the shortcut as the incoming tide was already started to come in.
After clearing the idle speed zone, we headed north and had the whole place to ourselves.......
or so I thought. About an hour later, the place turned into a Wallyworld parking lot....
Someone even managed to pull a inner tube weaving through all the boats.
Our scalloping crew, who managed to round up 8 gallon of scallop by a little after 1 pm, before it got too deep for them dive for them.
a happy crew
We then put the snorkels away, ran 4-5 miles away from the crowd and took out the fishing rods. We managed to put a few in the boat. Here's the bride with a fish on
nice netting
Not big but a keeper
Kedong with a cork down
fish on
and landed a nice upper slot fish
Kedong's daughter's turn to hook up. This on exploded on the surface as soon as the line came tight
again, nice netting work by Calvin
an over-slot fish
Our biggest fish for the trip at 23.5' , caught by Calvin dragging bait at the back of the boat
Kedong with our two over slot fish
We ended up with 8 on Saturday and 11 on Sunday.
The water temperature was 87. All the fish were caught in 5-6' water. They may be deeper as well but we didnt go any deeper than 6', however they were definitely not in shallower as we didnt get any bite when drifted to less than 4'. The scallops were pretty scattered, with most places we prospected only found singles and doubles, probably indicating that the spot has been picked over. Only on a few spots where we consistently found doubles or triples. So, all in all, the scallops are there, just need to take a little longer to round up a limit, but that's part of the fun. Hope everyone had a good 4th of July weekend.
The pro fisherman
They dont want you tournament fishing because you would always win. 
Yummy! Did you crosscut the trout before frying?