Dog Island Reef Report - 04/10/04
Posted: April 11th, 2004, 1:22 pm
Here is a fishing report of our trip yesterday. We got down to Lanark around 8:00 am. The captain, Hutson brought his Boston Whaler down to do some inshore and offshore fishing on Saturday. Banshee and I (Skeeter) went along for the trip. It was a great day all around. We launched the boat at Mike's in Lanark and headed out to Dog Island Reef. There were about 4 boats there when we arrived around 9:00 am. Fish were schooling and breaking the surface bait pods like crazy. When we stopped I immediately picked up a couple of small Spanish on a krocodile spoon. We trolled around a bit and also caught several more nice sized Spannies. By low tide around 11:30 we decided to head offshore for some grouper trolling. We got out to our numbers and put down a red/white stretch 25 and a green/blue stretch 30. I picked up 2 gags on the red/white in about 10 minutes. We let them both go as they were about 1 inch short of being legal! 
The seas were absolutely flat.
We also bottom fished with some spanish sardines on a few more spots, but no takers. We did see another boat box 2 nice gags close by on some live pinfish. We decided to head back to Dog Island Reef for some trolling around. When we got there the winds starting picking up out of the south-west, but it didn't seem to hurt the fishing any. We got a few more spannies in about 1 hour. Banshee and I got tangled up trolling so Hutson decided to slow down a bit, just then; WHAM! something BIG hit his chartreuse trolling spoon. He thought he was snagged, but it kept slowly coming in. By the time we got the MONSTER to the boat; we saw it was a HUGE bull RED! Here's the fish...
The fish was landed, photographed, and released successfully. It was 38 inches long! My guess was around 20-25 pounds as we did not have a decent scale on the boat that day. What a fish!
We then went back over to Dog Island and proceeded to catch a few small puppy reds in 2 ft. of water on shrimp, and many small short trout, and Banshee caught 4 more nice Spannies on a shrimp and CT. We headed back into the marina around sunset. What a day! Did not know the water temp, but it's good to see the trout, spannies, and redfish moving into the bay area finally around Dog Island.
Total for the day:
9 keeper spannies, 2 keeper trout, several small trout, 2 (close) gags, a flounder, and 1 MONSTER redfish! Many thanks to Hutson (Doc) and Banshee for such a great day on the water.
Best day on the water in a long time!
Skeeter
The seas were absolutely flat.We also bottom fished with some spanish sardines on a few more spots, but no takers. We did see another boat box 2 nice gags close by on some live pinfish. We decided to head back to Dog Island Reef for some trolling around. When we got there the winds starting picking up out of the south-west, but it didn't seem to hurt the fishing any. We got a few more spannies in about 1 hour. Banshee and I got tangled up trolling so Hutson decided to slow down a bit, just then; WHAM! something BIG hit his chartreuse trolling spoon. He thought he was snagged, but it kept slowly coming in. By the time we got the MONSTER to the boat; we saw it was a HUGE bull RED! Here's the fish...
The fish was landed, photographed, and released successfully. It was 38 inches long! My guess was around 20-25 pounds as we did not have a decent scale on the boat that day. What a fish!
We then went back over to Dog Island and proceeded to catch a few small puppy reds in 2 ft. of water on shrimp, and many small short trout, and Banshee caught 4 more nice Spannies on a shrimp and CT. We headed back into the marina around sunset. What a day! Did not know the water temp, but it's good to see the trout, spannies, and redfish moving into the bay area finally around Dog Island.
Total for the day:
9 keeper spannies, 2 keeper trout, several small trout, 2 (close) gags, a flounder, and 1 MONSTER redfish! Many thanks to Hutson (Doc) and Banshee for such a great day on the water.
Best day on the water in a long time!
Skeeter
