Shell Point Paddling 5-26
Posted: May 26th, 2012, 3:33 pm
My friend Mike and I headed out this morning and put out from the beach at Shell Point at sunrise + 20 minutes or so. Rather than headed right to chase reds on the oysters we pretty much paddled straight out to the grass flats. We keyed on spotty bottom and depth changes and pretty much started seeing trout activity right away. I got a few short strikes on top water but no hook-ups. I changed over to a soft plastic under a cork and that was all it took to turn on the fireworks.
We caught fish for pretty much 2 straight hours. The bite slowed down eventually so we drifted to deeper water and started catching them again. I landed 3 big keepers and 2 average sized ones plus 20 or so shorts and 1 catfish. Mike had a couple big keepers too and a few 16 inchers. His 2 biggest fish both self-released kayak-side before he could get a hand on them. It didn't seem to matter what color we threw, they ate nuclear chicken, white, grey, brown, and chartreuse colored plastic shaped like minnows, shrimp, and even sand worms. Most fish came from under the cork but the biggest were in deeper water on cork-less jigs.
The most interesting part of the day came when Mike's line broke above his cork with a huge trout on. We shared an "are you kidding me?" moment and a couple minutes later he says "there's my fish!"....and sure enough!, 20 yards away, there was his cork slowly gliding across the surface. We stalked up on it and tried some amaure fish rodeo. I went right, he went right, and the fish made a break for the gap between us. We both made valiant lunges for the cork but he went deep like Jaws and never re-surfaced! I had the harpoon gun loaded ready to tag him with another barrel but never got a shot!
We also saw a few different tarpon rolling in the channel and some awesome aerial displays by some good sized Spanish Mackerel and a couple slow and graceful sea turtles.
I'll post some pics later. Getting some family time this afternoon. All in all, it was a spectacular morning!
We caught fish for pretty much 2 straight hours. The bite slowed down eventually so we drifted to deeper water and started catching them again. I landed 3 big keepers and 2 average sized ones plus 20 or so shorts and 1 catfish. Mike had a couple big keepers too and a few 16 inchers. His 2 biggest fish both self-released kayak-side before he could get a hand on them. It didn't seem to matter what color we threw, they ate nuclear chicken, white, grey, brown, and chartreuse colored plastic shaped like minnows, shrimp, and even sand worms. Most fish came from under the cork but the biggest were in deeper water on cork-less jigs.
The most interesting part of the day came when Mike's line broke above his cork with a huge trout on. We shared an "are you kidding me?" moment and a couple minutes later he says "there's my fish!"....and sure enough!, 20 yards away, there was his cork slowly gliding across the surface. We stalked up on it and tried some amaure fish rodeo. I went right, he went right, and the fish made a break for the gap between us. We both made valiant lunges for the cork but he went deep like Jaws and never re-surfaced! I had the harpoon gun loaded ready to tag him with another barrel but never got a shot!
We also saw a few different tarpon rolling in the channel and some awesome aerial displays by some good sized Spanish Mackerel and a couple slow and graceful sea turtles.
I'll post some pics later. Getting some family time this afternoon. All in all, it was a spectacular morning!
