The Fog 2/21
Posted: February 21st, 2006, 8:32 pm
Bakertize picked me up on time and we headed out.
Launched from the fort in a pea soup fog and headed on down the river by 7:30.
Our first stop was in a futile search for pins, hoping to offer the grouper livebait, but the pins were nowhere to be found. After almost an hour fiddling around with this, we headed on out. To make a long story short we found no fish of any kind in less than 40' of water, no pins, no blacks, no grunts, no grouper. Once we got out to 40' the action was spotty, but did produce two gags, one short; one short red grouper; three blacks and three grunts. All hit cut bait, frozen squid, frozen alewives or fresh grunt. We did try to drown a couple of Stretch 30's for a while by dragging them behind the boat, but that didn't work either. I'm sure part of this was due to an inexperienced deck hand at this type of fishing.
Got rained on, on and off, until the early afternoon when the fog lifted, the sky cleared a little and the sun came out for a while. About the second time we got rained on Bakertize suggested putting the Bimini top up. A thought that I didn't initially pick up on, as strongly as I associate a Bimini top with keeping the sun off, but it was a great idea.
Did the whole thing in reverse coming back in and again caught nothing on anything in less than 40'.
The seas were a little choppy and running about 2' early in the morning until early afternoon. Then calmed a little for the return to the hill.
The only time the water temp went above 59.something was in the St. Marks River.
On the return trip the fog got steadily thicker as we got closer to the mouth of the river. Inside the Farewell Bouy I was glad he was running on two GPS's, a depth finder and a compass. We couldn't see from channel marker to channel marker and running up the river we couldn't see either bank.
All-in-all, a great trip with an excellent Captain.
Launched from the fort in a pea soup fog and headed on down the river by 7:30.
Our first stop was in a futile search for pins, hoping to offer the grouper livebait, but the pins were nowhere to be found. After almost an hour fiddling around with this, we headed on out. To make a long story short we found no fish of any kind in less than 40' of water, no pins, no blacks, no grunts, no grouper. Once we got out to 40' the action was spotty, but did produce two gags, one short; one short red grouper; three blacks and three grunts. All hit cut bait, frozen squid, frozen alewives or fresh grunt. We did try to drown a couple of Stretch 30's for a while by dragging them behind the boat, but that didn't work either. I'm sure part of this was due to an inexperienced deck hand at this type of fishing.
Got rained on, on and off, until the early afternoon when the fog lifted, the sky cleared a little and the sun came out for a while. About the second time we got rained on Bakertize suggested putting the Bimini top up. A thought that I didn't initially pick up on, as strongly as I associate a Bimini top with keeping the sun off, but it was a great idea.
Did the whole thing in reverse coming back in and again caught nothing on anything in less than 40'.
The seas were a little choppy and running about 2' early in the morning until early afternoon. Then calmed a little for the return to the hill.
The only time the water temp went above 59.something was in the St. Marks River.
On the return trip the fog got steadily thicker as we got closer to the mouth of the river. Inside the Farewell Bouy I was glad he was running on two GPS's, a depth finder and a compass. We couldn't see from channel marker to channel marker and running up the river we couldn't see either bank.
All-in-all, a great trip with an excellent Captain.
Thanks for an excellent report 
