Stmarks and steinhatchee 10/22-23: Into the murk
Posted: October 24th, 2021, 10:35 am
With our only planned delay in getting on the water Friday being a sales meeting at 8oclock, we got on the way with good vibes 
We didn't even let a blow out in waukeenah get our spirits down even though we had to scavenge to get the jack high enough to change the tire.
We also settled the age old debate whether size matters cause my spare from my bass boat definitely was too big for the fender.
But a quick stop at shields had us took care of and stone crab from riverside had us ready to fish.
And on the first stop the action came quick
Which led us to temp fate and try for reds behind grey mare which was a folly with horrible floating grass. So we decided to head on down to steinhatchee to get the buffet at fiddlers and our room.
Plus we had issues with the depth finder and had to rig up the backup
Day 2 started beautiful
We made the long-run to pepperfish and we were immediately disappointed, horrible floating grass and water that looked the st marks nwr toilets. But we made the most and found an area that was cleaner and I found my fishing luck from the trip before showed up on this trip
.
I proceeded to catch the first keeper and all the time of yelling Bobby live well from the previous trip hung heavy in the air and it all went downhill from there.
Very soon afterwards I was yelling Bobby start the boat, as I hooked a tarpon and was being spooled quickly but it pulled free. Soon afterwards I was yelling for the boat to be started again due to hooking what had to be a kingfish as quickly as I was spooled and cut off. After all of this excitement I was put to shame as all I was able to put in the boat was an ole rock bass while my partner had put 2 keepers in the live well.
We then had a lull for about two more hours and then we came upon a large school of bait being busted by everything it seemed and had a 30minute feeding frenzy and caught some sand trout, seatrout, Spanish, and some of the largest lady fish I've ever seen. After the frenzy of catching and feeding died down we fished hard for 2.5 more hours with nothing but short bsb and trout to show for it and decided Kathy's sounded better than fishing any longer since we skipped lunch.
But still decent considering how weird this fall has been and we debated at supper which hat had the best fishing luck.
Kathi's was awesome as usual while I had snapper that was excellent they cooked Bobby an excellent steak as well. Now we're planning a November trip to hopefully get some better water conditions.
As a side note, the red tide issues seem to be fairly minor as far as I saw we saw a couple of dead pinfish and a dead amberjack that may have been killed by a shark instead of red tide because it was chewed up pretty bad.
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We didn't even let a blow out in waukeenah get our spirits down even though we had to scavenge to get the jack high enough to change the tire.
We also settled the age old debate whether size matters cause my spare from my bass boat definitely was too big for the fender.
But a quick stop at shields had us took care of and stone crab from riverside had us ready to fish.
And on the first stop the action came quick
Which led us to temp fate and try for reds behind grey mare which was a folly with horrible floating grass. So we decided to head on down to steinhatchee to get the buffet at fiddlers and our room.
Plus we had issues with the depth finder and had to rig up the backup
Day 2 started beautiful
We made the long-run to pepperfish and we were immediately disappointed, horrible floating grass and water that looked the st marks nwr toilets. But we made the most and found an area that was cleaner and I found my fishing luck from the trip before showed up on this trip
.I proceeded to catch the first keeper and all the time of yelling Bobby live well from the previous trip hung heavy in the air and it all went downhill from there.
Very soon afterwards I was yelling Bobby start the boat, as I hooked a tarpon and was being spooled quickly but it pulled free. Soon afterwards I was yelling for the boat to be started again due to hooking what had to be a kingfish as quickly as I was spooled and cut off. After all of this excitement I was put to shame as all I was able to put in the boat was an ole rock bass while my partner had put 2 keepers in the live well.
We then had a lull for about two more hours and then we came upon a large school of bait being busted by everything it seemed and had a 30minute feeding frenzy and caught some sand trout, seatrout, Spanish, and some of the largest lady fish I've ever seen. After the frenzy of catching and feeding died down we fished hard for 2.5 more hours with nothing but short bsb and trout to show for it and decided Kathy's sounded better than fishing any longer since we skipped lunch.
But still decent considering how weird this fall has been and we debated at supper which hat had the best fishing luck.
Kathi's was awesome as usual while I had snapper that was excellent they cooked Bobby an excellent steak as well. Now we're planning a November trip to hopefully get some better water conditions.
As a side note, the red tide issues seem to be fairly minor as far as I saw we saw a couple of dead pinfish and a dead amberjack that may have been killed by a shark instead of red tide because it was chewed up pretty bad.
Sent from my Pixel 4 XL using Tapatalk
Very nice report. Thanks for posting. 