BigBendFishing.Net

Wind blowing ninety to nothing , temp dropping..Just walked outside and looked at boat under shed and came back in and picked up my bay map.....looking at area west of St Marks river and got to thinking......

First time I ever saw the ocean was in early 60's....I was grown and working but probably never been outside Ga over twice and that was to Seminole and Lake Talquin..

Electrician I was helper for was always talking about going down to Live Oak Island somewhere south of Tallahassee and "ketching sea trouts"..One Fri he announced he was going and wanted to know if I wanted to go..course I did !

Asked him what we needed for fishing and he said your Zebco 33 and a 1/4 lb spool of 10lb test, (99 cents at Gibsons) and we'd get the hooks and bait in Florida.

We headed out that night in his old car....stopped at some place he knew southside of Tallahassee and bought two mullet for bait , couple mirrolures, ice, some canned goods and drinks....He had some more refreshment in a brown paper sack as I remember...

Somtime later we arrived at the boat ramp....Idea was to rent a wooden boat for a couple of dollars...We had his Johnson Sea Bee or whatever it was in the trunk along with a can of premixed gas and oil....

Must have been after midnight when we got there and plans were to just nap in the car till daylight..It was real warm that night and the sand gnats tended to come in swarms.....no such thing as cracking a window ! It were hot !

Next morning we headed out, I remember the first crack of daylight coming in the east and before long saw the lighthouse.....He told me it was at St Marks.....

Well as I can remember, we had a box of nice fish in short order....In fact we stopped fishing with bait pretty quickly and started throwing mirrolures which was new to me....trout sure hit em though....never had seen a plug you had to impart the action to like a mirrolure...I was used to bombers and pikie type plugs.stuff like that... I had brought my Pflueger Akron which was all I had, filled with black cotten braided line on a solid fiberglass bait casting rod.....Remember after thumbing that baitcaster throwing those mirrolures that it wasn't long before I had a piece of friction tape around my thumb to keep what skin was left from leaving me!

We caught a littlle of everything...Had reels stripped.....a first for me....must have been sharks....He kept mentioning cobia...whatever that was......Who knows what all else we put in the boat that day......

We got back home that night with more fish that I'd ever caught in my life ....Remember cleaning fish till midnight..sunburnt, tired and wanting to go back to Florida!

Strangely, I never fished that area again....Later on started fishing over around Panacea, then it was the Enconfina area for many years...I did fish the area east of St Marks a few times in later years but it was this past summer that I started fishing out of St Marks again....always to the east ...I never have gone back to the area west of the river...Next spring I plan on going over that way....

This was just some rambling on my part on a winter night...As much to post a new topic as anything....I imagine some of the old timers can remember the days I'm talking about....Wish some others would share some of their experiences over the years...especially since current fishing reports have been as scarce as groupers in shallow water !

Great stuff Sundown.... ...I have some stories like that as well and I was born in 70 ..Remember the old house at Econfina, the dirt landing...Coming home with red coca cola coolers slam full of trout...good memories....thanks for reminding us of the way it used to be...

Seems like the fish were a lot more numreous back in the 70's and 80's. I know me and my dad went out many days and caught coolers full of trout, reds, flounders, or anything else out there. It didn't seem as hard to catch 'em back then, maybe because the trout we kept were mostly smaller ones (12-13'' average). And the only lures we carried on the flats were white, white-firetail, yellow, or yellow-firetail grubs. Sometimes we'd throw a mirrolure on the flats or some topwater like a devilshorse.
And I never remember a winter when the fish wern't in the rivers like the past 2 years. That's strange. Where do they go?

I'm not old enough to have any memories like that!

That was a fine story, well told.

Reminded me of the first time I fished up here out of a boat. It was in the mid-70's, and Carl Thompson took me and his son out trout fishin' on the flats.

We fished with nothing but silver spoons, and we couldn't stop from catchin' trout after troiut after trout.

Nice story Sundown, I like a good read.

There are few things that can beat good memories.
As the man said, "fings ain't wot they use to be".

Good Reading- those are some fine memories

Great read Sundown. I remember trips like that back in the 50's when I would tag along with my Dad and his best buddy Mr. Johnson.
We would put the little gas kicker and a tank of gas in the trunk and off we would go to the lake and rent a wooden boat too. I did not fish that much then because I was so young then. But I do remember the bait casters and the zebco reels, metal minnow buckets, worms in a coffee can and some of the best father & son times I ever experenced with my dad.
Thanks for reminding me of good times past.
God bless you.

That's a dern good tale. 'Puts me in mind of some of my days gone by.
As you say, maybe others here will relate some of thier experiences.

A tip for those, who might want to post a lengthy story: I have found, it is hard to keep a long story going with good continuity in limited field here, as with most forums.
Generally, except for short comments, I do my composition with Notepad and copy and paste it in the field. And, in some cases, I save it as a text file for future reference.
Most all of you probably already do this, but if not, give it a try.

My 2 cents worth....April 11, 1987. Econfina. Wyley partner. We found the trout about 1030am....after looking all morning. Started catching em about then. Jigs were the bait. Any color. White was best. We anchored (never before nor since on the flats) and proceeded to catch 276 trout. This catch went on till about mid afternoon. It was almost every cast for a great length of time. We called some other friends on the radio and they caught almost 100 trout before we left. Wind was pretty brisk. I watched my depth finder...painting sinewaves on the screen....up and down..up and down. Quit fishing about 1600.
When we got to the landing...a boat was retrieving. They were camped out...and wanted enough fish for supper. They had been out most all day...3 of them...and had only 3-4 fish. I had no answer then as to why the trout were so active for us.....and so poor for them.
We were about 2 miles east of the river...out about2-3 miles....a place that is pretty good even now.
There was no numbers limit then....only a 12 in. minimum.
My last trip....4 days ago to Aucilla....not a bite was had by anyone I fished with...including.....me.
It is a mystery to me why there were so many fish back then....and so few now. With the current limit of 5....I hardly ever...catch the limit.

Great! Thanks for sharing those memories!

MERRY CHRISTMAS!