St. Marks 7/17

Post by **birddog** » July 17th, 2004, 4:29 pm

Put in at the lighthouse around 6:30 a.m. The wind was blowin! Motored out of the canal and decided right quick I didn't want to try to head for Goose Creek Bay. Decided to head up the East River looking for reds. Spent a couple of hours up there with no luck. Headed back down to the mouth of the river and suprisingly it seemed to be calming down. Headed west over towards Sprague Island and started a drift in 4' of water. Bam! 1st trout of the day and a 22" at that. Man their gonna turn it on. Wrong!

Continued a couple of drifts there with no more luck, so we headed over between Pattys Island and Live Oak Pt. Drifted through some 8' to 12' water finally picked up one more keeper 16" trout and several sailcats.

By 12:30 the clouds were beginning to build in the NW so we headed back out in front of the lighthouse. Started our drift just after we crossed the river channel. 1st cast produced a 18" cobia. He put up a good effort despite his size. Cont. our drift and managed to pick up 4 throwback trout. By this time the storm was on our heels, so we called it a day.

What few fish we caught were on jigs and SWA. No particular color seemed any better than any other.

Tough as it was I still can't wait until next time.

dstockwell · Post by **dstockwell** » July 17th, 2004, 4:36 pm

Tough it was, you got a few and were out there.

Post by **BIG** » July 18th, 2004, 6:31 pm

I was about to post my trip from yesterday, but I read your post and it was almost identical to your experience. Left LH at 7 AM and returned 12:30 PM.

We picked up only one keeper trout in the East River and was pleasently surprised when the water got calmer as we left the river. I set up a drift halfway between the channel marker and Patty Island and was unsuccessful.

Does anyone think the wind or new moon had anything to do with the slowness?

Post by **birddog** » July 18th, 2004, 6:37 pm

BIG, It's just normal summertime fishing. The new moon is generally a good time to fish. And according to the solunar tables Sat. was the best day of the month to fish, if you believe that sort of "Hocus Pocus". I'm blaming Sat. poor fishing on poor weather cond.