St. Marks Report - 04/27/2002

Post by **Tom Keels** » April 29th, 2002, 8:12 am

My friend Jason and I departed the lighthouse at 6:30 and headed over to the Peter's Rock area. We first decided to hit the last 2 marker bouys in the channel in seach of a cobia. No one home. A stiff Southeast wind made it a little choppy going over there but we made it in about 15 minutes.

I started by throwing a cajun thunder with a pink jig and Jason started with just a straight jig. We immediately started catching everything under the sun and until the tide turned were catching it pretty steady in 7-8 feet of water. Trout, ladyfish, mackerel, blue runnners, lizardfish and rockbass were all willing to oblige.

After the tide turned about 9, we decided to start chumming in hopes of a cobia. The first 2 takers on the live pinfish were 18" trout. The next was a 3 pound bluefish. We continued to catch rockbass, sharks and the occasional ladyfish. Something grabbed one of the pinfish and slowly started to swim away and I qucikly recognized it to be a garfish so I just steady pulled until he let go.

About 10 minutes later the same rod was slowly moving off again and I thought here we go again. So I did the same steady pull to get it away from the garfish, only this wasn't a garfish as I saw the tell tale brown and white coloring. I told Jason cobia and the fight was on for about 15 seconds when he came loose. Then I remembered I didn't set the hook. Oh well, he didn't look legal anyway. That at least made me feel better.

Over the next hour the spanish moved in and after I landed the first one that went 5 pounds, they decided they liked lip jewelry and broke us off the next 4 times. They would not touch the heavy leaders today, only the 20 # flouro. After no real bites for about an hour Jason and I decided to call it a day. And judging by the traffic on the radio we did better that a lot of folks that reported a very slow bite.
Ran back to the lighthouse and met up with Running Bare along the way and stopped to chat. Good thing I did because he was fishing on credit.

Back at the ramp at 1:30
Total Tally:
4 trout to 18"
2 Spanish to 5#
1 3# bluefish
1 14" rockbass

Not a bad day for a full moon and we weren't trying really hard. Just sort of relaxing and shooting the breeze.

_________________
Tom Keels
Owner, Webmaster
BigBendFishing.Net

Post by **seatrout99** » April 29th, 2002, 8:41 am

We, too, fished out of the Lighthouse on Saturday. We used a little different strategy this time. We came late, after low tide, to fish the rise and fall. We launched at about eleven. The day started pretty slow, but the bite really turned on for us on the fall in late afternoon. Never left the East Flats all day. Never left sight of the spoil pile. Fished until 7:30 or so. Great day to watch the sun go down.

Total for the Day:
9 Keeper Trout (15,15,15.5,15.5,16,16, 17, 18.5, 26.5) around 40 throwbacks
2 spanish ( 2 lbs, 5 lbs)
4 sharks (kept one black tip, 3.5 ft)
4 ladyfish, 8 blue runners, pinfish,, etc...

Saw a few baitfish, but not many.
Caught most fish on candy-corn under an equalizer. Late afternoon, biggest fish caught on candy-corn slow-rolled on bottom.
Caught a couple on electric chicken and space guppy. All in all, a good day!! The largest trout weighed 6 lbs. The trout seemed to run small all day until late in the evening. Can't wait to go back next week!!

Seatrout99

phish-n-fool · Post by **phish-n-fool** » April 29th, 2002, 10:46 am

I think that gar is a regular at Pete's rock...was he about 3' long?

Post by **Tom Keels** » April 29th, 2002, 10:57 am

That's him. But they are all over the place in that area.

Post by **Will_Fish_4_Food** » April 29th, 2002, 11:46 am

Same Day Results:

Put in about 11am. Fished the rising tide from inside the stakeline to GrayMare to the shoreline.

Fished for Reds as the tide changed, and then went home.

Kept 4 trout, 1 22"er, caught a couple dozen peanuts.
Caught 1 Red, 17"er.

They (reds) were swarming Wednesday. Guess they partied the night before and didn't want to cooperate.