Fiddlin' For Scallops at St. Marks

8.24.11

Wanting some scallops to go with our sea bass we caught yesterday we headed down to St. Marks to try our hand at a little inshore fishing and then scallop treasure hunting.

We were greeted with strong easterly winds.   We managed to put in a few drifts at the St. Marks reef, but all we caught that was gamey was one little trout and one little sea bass.   But the sharks left sore mouthed.  Again, Nancy is number one when shark are in the area.

We decided to head in as the tide was falling to try and get some scallops.

It started off slow.

 I was getting in to some quality float time.

Finally Patty picked up her fiddle and things got good real quick.  We found them on the spongey grass in about 4 feet of water.

I guess the fiddle playing brought them up nicely.

The Final Result!

Whale of a Time on Wakulla Reef

8.23.11

Temp. Air=low 90's, Water=89-90

Tide: Almost high to outgoing

I got a tip from our neighbor that the Friday before some daulphin had been caught out at the Wakulla Reef.  The bait had moved in and the water has been so hot that they had migrated in pretty close to shore.

So, Willie and Patty came in town to visit and I asked if they wanted to give it a try.  I think Willie's reply was in the range of "Hell Yea!".

So we headed out on calm seas and a beautiful morning for the end of August.

I have three gps coordinates for Wakulla Reef and our strategy was to hit each one and then fish a patch of live bottom I had found a couple years ago on the way back in.  We would call it a day after that and look forward to a cold cereveza.

At our first drop we found the sea bass and grunts to be relatively cooperative.  Soon I was pulling a small grunt in and a 20 lb. kingfish came tearing out from under the boat and grabbed it.  Willie quickly dropped his bait down and the king grabbed it and promptly bit him off.

Patty soon started grunting and brought up this nice endangered gag grouper.

The action slowed and we moved about a mile east and started the process again with the same results.  This time Willie caught the nice gag.

Notice the serious fisher people in the back of the boat trying to duplicate Willie's technique.

The action slowed here also and we picked up to fish our last marked spot on the reef.  As we proceeded we suddenly saw the birds in action and slid over to the commotion.  Patty had her video camera on this time and recorded the action.  We were excited since we came for the daulphin and this looks like them.

THIS VIDEO HAS A LOT OF BAD CURSE WORDS IN IT, SO DO NO LISTEN IF YOU ARE OFFENDED BY SUCH CRUDE MANNERS.  THE CAPTAIN IS NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR THE LANGUAGE OF HIS CLIENTS!!!!!!

All we could manage was sharks out of this pod of crazy fish.  Daulphin, big cobia and sharks were all present.  We really messed up this opportunity but we did get some sharks.

Here are some videos to prove it.

The last one about tore Nancy's arms off.

We then headed to the hill.  I wanted to stop at a patch of coral I found when fishing with Doug and Linda a few years ago.  We caught some nice sea bass and a big shark then.  I wanted to add to the black sea bass in the cooler.

We started catching the sea bass and then Nancy really heated up catching two nice red grouper that hitched a ride home with us for dinner.

On the way back in Patty saw a whale jump out of the water near the 26 bouy.  When we got home we realized it jumped at the time of a 5.9 earthquake hitting the east coast.

Coincidence or earthquake result?

It was indeed a whale of a time today with the Bentley crew!