Schmoakin!

5.23.13

David and I headed out to some grouper numbers he had that were good two weeks ago.

Of course the switch has been flipped and the temp this week has skyrocketed to the mid 90's.

Two weeks ago the water temperature was in the low seventies, as we hit the water yesterday morning it was 82 degrees.

We plugged the numbers in and after 3 hours of fishing we had nary a grouper in the box.  Only two sharks grabbed our baits.

So, David kept wanting to catch an kingfish.  So, I said let's go to 24 marker.

About two miles south of 24 we started seeing bait.  The first pod had two nice kings milling around.

David rigged a pinfish with a stinger hook rig and soon was saying, "I'm getting spooled!", and the boat was placed in gear to help him gather some line.

Soon a happy angler was lifting a 20 lb. king in the boat.

We found a few other pods of bait and fished them, but to no avail and decided to call it a day.

David texted me later in the evening and said his grill was fired up.

Clam Bar

5.16.13

Nancy waded through a bunch of lady fish and spanish mackerel to catch this nice trout this morning off the clam bar.

We caught a lot of lady fish and mackerel but the trout remained scarce.

It was good to get out after being bed ridden with a cold.

Bad Cold. Bad Fishing.

5.9.13

Water 72 degrees 1 foot waves.

We finally got a nice calm day to fish and headed back to Lanark to put a hurt on the grouper that we found two weeks earlier.

I was feeling really bad with a cold Hunter left behind, but our friends Phil and Dee were down from Gainesville and I wanted to put them on some fish.

The day started with a big black bear wondering in front of the truck on the way to the ramp.

He seemed to like the telephone pole and stood there while I got a picture out the window of the truck.

We found the Cagles and headed out to 46 feet and trolled while the Phil and Dee and family dropped down.

After many passes I started to think this may not be our day as nothing came to the boat.

We headed out to federal waters and Nancy caught this nice king fish on the Stretch 30.

 Other than that there was not anything else to report.

Ah, that is why they call it fishing and not catching.  

Piney Island Food Run

5.6.13

It was Hunter and Ben's last day and they wanted some meat for their table when they had back home to Augusta and Charleston.

We wanted to go offshore and try and catch some steaks, but the wind wouldn't let us.

So we stayed inshore to try and catch some standard fare.

We tried the bird rack between Shell Point Reef and Piney with no success.

We tried the outside of the reef, but only had lady fish poop on the boat on two drifts.

So we headed to the ol' never fail spot in front of Piney Island.

We picked up 3 eating trout and one eating flounder.  Hunter lost a whopper on a Z man swim bait and Ben made his sponsor, Burnside Bopper, happy by using their popping cork and pulling in this nice keeper trout.

The water still isn't where it should be, still murky, and 71 degrees.

Hopefully they will be back soon and the wind cooperates the next time.

Bull Red Rock

5.4.13

Wind blowing hard from the east as usual
Water temp: 68 degrees

Hunter and Ben came down to fish the Big Bend this weekend.  The weather was very iffy as the winds are still blowing and the rain is still falling.

I decided to take them to the Aucilla River due to the fact that I felt the east wind would be knocked down there and that the fish up our way have not been very cooperative.  This planned worked pretty well.

It would be an exploration trip since I had never been there.  I was cautioned on boating in the area due to the rocks, but the rock also help the area harbor a lot of fish.  We were soon to find out if this was true.

We made the hour jaunt to the Aucilla River ramp and we were one of three trucks there on a Saturday, much to our surprise.

With the help of a map downloaded from the internet, we proceeded to putt our way to the coast of the Gulf.  This is a place where you need all day to fish because you aren't going anywhere fast unless you want to lose your lower unit.

Upon our arrival to the fishing area we tried banging the coastline first, and all we had was one topwater explosion and no fish to the boat.

We then headed away from the hill a bit to try and do some drifts to drum up some trout.  We caught some small ones and the pinfish were pecking good, but nothing to keep us in the area very long.

We decided to head to the west towards an area that says Cobb Rocks on my GPS.

We made a few drifts and the trout kept getting a little larger.

This one grabbed a nose hooked Gulp Jerk Shad.

As we made another, drift Ben and Hunter noted a white pipe in the water about a quarter of a mile away and we decided to make a drift towards the rock.

As we approached the rock, I  casted the Jerk Shad up towards the rock and after a couple of pops of my rod I felt the tell tale thump of a fish and set the hook.

The battle was on!  After about fifteen minutes a beautiful bull red was brought into the boat.

This was the biggest red I had ever caught and the ten pound Suffix fluorocarbon leader was tested, but withstood this brutes long runs.  Little did I know that the leader and Hunter's knots would be tested again.

We made another pass by the rock and Hunter hooked up on this nice bluefish that ran him around the front deck a couple of times.

We made another pass and decided to try some shallower water, but nothing materialized.

So we headed back out to the newly named, Bull Red Rock for another go around.

As we neared the rock I again felt the thump of a red.  This time I was using Hunter's Loomis/Stradic combo and the fight was on.  Ben mentioned that this time he was going to time the length of the battle since we could see another bull red had ate the Jerk Shad again.

The fight was on as the fish roaming back and forth over the shallow rocks and all we kept talking about was knot strength and drag smoking.

Hunter thinking his Dad is a wiener for not dragging this fish to the boat

The battle went on and the fish dragged the boat further from the rock and off shore we were headed.

Ben was calling out the time every ten minutes or so.  After about 20 minutes he saw some activity and threw his chug bug out and caught this nice spanish to break his boredom.

Finally after a long, long battle Hunter was able to finally get the net up under this fish.

Here is a video of the landing.

SPOILER ALERT!!!!!

I say the lord's name in vain, sorry in advance.

We hoisted the fish and figured it was in the 30-40 lb. range which made my previous biggest redfish pale in comparison.

After getting ourselves settled in after the excitement, be looked to the east and saw rainclouds gathering.

We decided to putt back to the ramp, but not after running aground on an oyster bar, and getting absolutely soaked after our timing didn't work out so well and the rains came.

What a rain!

What a fishing trip!