Left Shell Island about 8 Fri morning and headed to west flats…First time fishing in this area..Quite a few boats already out there..In two hours only thing I caught was ladyfish and a couple sailcats…So headed over to east flats where I usually go..Caught some shorts and one keeper and then the wind started …Worst 5 to 10’s I ever saw….Did learn some new tricks casting with one hand ..the other hanging on the grab rail…..Came in REAL early…Mouth of the river was SOMEWHAT rough….
Friday night, my fishing buddy Jay the trout specialist came down…We decided to hit the shallow water early and then move out to deeper water and soak some pinfish later on…Maybe find a disoriented cobia swimming around….
Well, he put on a clinic….in bout 20 minits he had a limit of 18-20 inch fish and I had one 15 incher…Then it got calm ..bite stopped dead…..we finally caught enough pinfish for bait and headed out past the stakeline to some decent looking bottom and put out the baits….He caught a shark that was probably close to 5 ft which we released and then decided to drag some stretches for what it was worth….seas real calm…It was bout 12:30 by now…Incidently, we saw more bait pods than I’ve ever seen out there..
We’re both novices at this trolling….tried it before but never caught anything but black sea bass…However , we put a couple of stretch 25’s out in about 20 ft of water and started to some numbers I had on gps…….At about 25 ft the rod I had out tried to double…..It was general quarters ! got boat knocked out of gear and finally got rod out of holder….knew something big was on there…finally got fish started to boat and then toward top…
Strangest looking thing you ever saw came up slinging water and splashing…….had two gags on..a 21 and 23…..We got em in boat and measured them….first for both of us….that made the trip….ten minits later we talking wondering where we can find a good used 22-23 ft boat !
That wound it up far as the grouper..we trolled another 30 minutes or so and then the clouds and rain started and it got rough so we started for the lighthouse which was 12 miles away..got pretty nasty just before we got there but we stopped in shallow water and caught several more trout..bunch of shorts included…..Real weather started coming in so we headed for the landing….But a very good day for both of us………
This morning while I was washing up all my stuff, I was rinsing off all the plugs I used yesterday and found something strange….the front hook on the stretch I caught the two groupers on had the eye through the split ring instead of the split ring through the eye…How it got like that and when I have no idea…the eye was big enough to hold it pretty good….It took some maneuvering with a pair of needlenose pliers and my pocket knife to get it back on but I wondered if it was like that when we caught the fish…..Very strange…….
St. Marks 17 & 18
Moderators: bman, Chalk, Tom Keels
nice writeup - sounds like a good trip
