Half a Fish Story

5.18.12

Incoming Tide

Water: 78 deg.

It's been real windy the past couple of weeks unfortunately.  My bro and I have been trying to fish the Redtrout Shootout.  He keeps driving 3 hours to fish with me and they keep canceling the tourney due to small craft advisories.

I have been catching a few trout on topwater, not the size caught earlier but nice 19"-20" fish with some smaller ones thrown in.

I went out this morning to see if the NE wind that is predicted for this Saturday's trout tournament would allow me to fish the flats in front of Mashes.  I quickly determined that it wasn't gonna work and cancelled my plans to fish Saturday.

So I saddled up to the oyster bars in the mouth of the Ochlockonee.

I was fishing the bar where Willie and I caught them early this year hoping to catch a red.  I spied a bunch of sheepshead but no reds. 

So with the tide running hard and creating an eddy behind the boat, I switched over to a heavy jig head tipped with a Gulp shrimp in new penny.

I was getting a lot of grunt bites and even managed to put a few in the boat.

I felt a good bump and set the hook.  When I first set up the fish wouldn't budge and I  thought I had hooked a manatee that had just swam under the anchor rope.

Then I felt the head shake.

And the battle began.

I fought the fish for 15 minutes before I finally got a glimpse of a really, really big red or black drum.

The back and forth battle of me bringing him to the surface and the fish diving back down went on and on.

I was finally winning the battle and trying to determine what to do when I get the monster boat side when I felt quite a tussle on my line.  Then the drum slowly started coming to the boat.

I looked down and saw bright red coming up from the area where my line entered the water.

As I kept reeling and the fish surfaced I realized I now had half a black drum.

A shark had bitten him in half.  Now, with blood running thick behind the boat and a shark lurking in the off colored water, I was thinking, "Do I really want to put my hand anywhere near this fish?"

I finally and quickly used my Boga Grip and swiftly brought the bleeding fish aboard.

As you can see it was at one time a huge fish.

This part was 30" long and pinned my 15 lb. Boga easily.

After rejigging my line and lure I proceeded to catch a bunch of white trout out of the hole.

While I was catching them a Spinner Shark jumped out of the water about 100 yards behind the boat and did a 360 degree turn.

I guess he was thanking my for his meal this morning.

Note to self:  Do not swim in the Ochlockonee River.

Cobia Run

5.4.12

Incoming Tide

Water high 70's

Nancy and I got off the hill in the Nan Z to try and catch some cobes.

We got word that a friend of ours caught a 52 lb. cobia at Rotary Reef last week so we wanted some of that.

Nancy quickly got on board with a nice 32" cobia on a downline ly.  She got broke off about three more times when another boat came up and anchored within spitting distance of us.

Saying the heck with that and some other choice words, we did our usual little cobia run hitting the posts on the way back in to Rock Landing.

They were at our favorite pole and I managed to put two more 32" fish into the boat and saw one more monster cobia but couldn't get him to bite.

My fish came on pinfish chucked out towards the channel marker poles.

Hard to believe that these aren't legal fish.

Almost Rocked The Dock

4.28 and 4.29 2012

OR mouth

Nancy and I fished the Rock the Dock tournament out of Rock Landing this weekend.

The past few tournaments in the area have been cancelled due to the weather.  The pent up demand of boats wanting to fish may have contributed to the record turn out of over 350 entrants for the tournament.

The organizers and volunteers were very pleased with the tourney results and they did a great job of running the tournament.

We decided to go for broke and fish the area we know best and that is the mouth of the Ochlockonee River.  We knew that the tournament winning fish were swimming there, all you have to do is catch them.

Saturday, we hit the river a daylight hoping to catch some topwater fish on the incoming tide.

I did manage to catch a 3 plus trout on a badonk a donk and lost a toad on the next cast.  We scrounged up a few keeper trout, but nothing to get excited about in the morning.

We came back in and got lunch, walked the dog and took a nap and headed back out in the afternoon.

The afternoon bite was tough until we decided to drag a few shrimp on a carolina rig around the bars.

We hit our the white bar where Willie had caught his 5 lb. trout earlier in the year.  We always have a lot of confidence when we roll up there, but we had fished it earlier with nothing to show.  This time it was different.

I was first in the water and first on the board with this quick fish blowout.

Nancy tossed in and I watched her rod tip pull down and she set the hook.  After a heck of a battle she landed this trout which is the largest ever caught by the Fish Hard Panacea fishing team.

The fish weighed 5.45 lbs. on the Rock the Dock Tourney scales and placed her fourth, just out of the money.  Big trout for the 2 day tournament was 5.8 lbs.

After some pictures were taken she threw out and again her rod tip went down as soon as the shrimp entered the water and hit the bottom.  After another battle in the swift water she pulled in this nice 22" redfish.

I finally got my rig back in the water after all of her fish catching and managed this beauty.  Don't ask me what it is.

We started catching trash fish and decided to head in and get prepared for the next day.

We figured that we knew how to catch them now and would even catch bigger fish on Sunday.

We again hit the water at the break of day and proceeded to go fish less except for one small redfish.  Who would have thought.

We headed back in to weigh Nancy's nice trout and she was in third place at the time.

We came back to the award ceremony and found she had fell off the board. 

But we did see some big fish weighed in.

Our friend Blake went king fishing and came in second.  His fish was shark bitten while getting it to the boat.  You figure out if he would have won.  Here is his fish next to the winning kingfish which weighed 40 plus lbs.

The largest fish was an 88 lb. Amberjack.

Check this thing out!

Nancy didn't win anything, but they knew she showed up!

Big Fish Update

Update to post last week.

Cheryl caught plenty of these monsters while looking over her shoulder for "the man".

She learned the term "tourist rig" and used it to her advantage.

My crack photography crew just got me this picture.

PompaNO, Trout Yes

4.19 and 4.20

We went and tried our luck at Pompano fishing.
You need to catch sand fleas first.  Not the gnat kind, but the mole crab kind.  I called my local sand flea experts and they told us where to go out on Alligator Point to gather them.
Well, the wind was blowing so hard that we couldn't get near the stretch of beach where they live.
Proving again, if we have to use something other than plastic, we won't catch any fish since we can't catch any bait.  Not local enough I guess.

We headed out to Dog Island and fished the east side of it and the west side of St. George island.
We had no luck except for ladyfish.  They kept the poop flying all day.

Nancy did catch a trout, but that was about it.

It was a very nice day out though.

Hunter had to leave on Friday, so we got up and hit the oyster bars at the OR mouth.

We put in a dead low tide.  The water temp was in the mid seventies.

We decided to hit the clam bar first since the water wasn't moving.  Hunter caught a nice trout pretty quick on his Zman bait Swimmerz in pearl white.

He really ate it as you can see by the picture.

As is the case when you catch one early, it was a long time between bites as we moved around the flat waiting for the water to move.

We fished the outer bars with no luck, slid in a fished the middle bars and stuck a trout, and the water really started to move.  We headed out to to the pole I have been catching trout on and they were there in the swift water

Hunter connected on his largest trout ever.  This 23 inch 4 and 1/2 lb. trout hit his white gulp shrimp about the time it hit the water.

The next cast he caught a 3 lb. trout.  I caught a nice flounder there too. He came home with us for a flounder bake he was invited to.

The water muddied after a while, so we slid back to the back bars to try and catch a redfish, but again they are hiding from us this year.

Hunter had to get back to catch a plane, so we loaded the Nan up and headed back to the house with another satisfying fishing trip with Hunter, the tarpon manget.

Tarpon Magnet Back In Town

4.17,2012

Water:  75 deg.

Wind: South

Hunter and I hit the water around noon today.  Hunter was itching to get after them and catch up on his tan.

The wind was blowing  pretty hard from the south and we quickly determined that the mouth of the OR was too rough for us.  We decided to head over to Carrabelle to fish in front of the river and slide down towards Lanark.  It was pretty choppy there also, but we managed to fish just by taking our time and eliminate water coming over the bow.

We tried banging the bank just east of the river with no luck on a nice high tide.

We eased around to the mouth of the river and had one good blow up on the badond a donk, but no hook ups.

We fished west of the river mouth and caught a couple keeper trout and some ladys, but just enough to keep us interested.

The wind layed a little and we headed down towards the abandoned motel where Cheryl had caught a couple little trout last week.

As we fished the little grass patch, I managed a trout.  Hunter was casting one way and me another.

Suddenly it sounded like Hunter had fell in and I got splashed in my back.

Hunter had a tarpon come up and eat his Zman Swimmerz about 15 feet from the boat.  The splash on me was from the fish wetting me down.  Hunter said he would have liked to have a picture of his face as the big tarpon came up and ate his swim bait.  Hunter did what you are supposed to do, he set up on the beast, but 15 lb. flouro leader material doesn't stand up well against a 150 lb. fish.  The tarpon swam away with a hook in his mouth and left us a good story to tell.  It's April and we had a tarpon hook up, so it may be a good tarpon year.

We slid further east down the bar and the fishing heated up with me catching a nice 20" trout on top and Hunter landing a 19" trout that ate his second Swimmerz.

Another day in the life of the Tarpon Magnet, Hunter.

Tough Week

4.16.12

Wind has been blowing pretty good this past week.
It blew hard enough Saturday that the Redtrout tournament was called off due to small craft advisory being posted early Saturday morning.
Too bad, Doug came up to fish it with me, so he had to go home with no earnings.
We fished the lake and caught a bunch of bass though.
I practiced all week and could only find a few trout in the mouth of the OR.

I caught a bunch of three pounders like this one on Thursday, also caught one that was 4 lbs. on a jerk bait.
We tried fishing at Lanark and Piney, but just couldn't make it happen.
I don't know where to catch a red.
Cheryl came down and caught her some small trout and I took our neighbor out, Mario, and he caught some ladyfish.  So they had something tighten their lines anyway.
Hunter is coming in today for a few days, so we usually spank them when he shows up.
Now, if the wind will let us fish.