Bananas before Debbie

6.22.12

We finally managed to get out and fish a little.  The winds were from the SE at 15 mph and the water temp was in the low eighties.

Phil and Dee were down from Gainesville to do a little salt fishing and see the wonderful sights of the Forgotten Coast.

They brought their boat back to it's origin of birth here at Mike's Marine.

It is a sweet riding boat and took the inshore chop well.

Here they are with the pedal down looking for the next trout honey hole.

Fishing wasn't a total bust.

We managed to put a speckled and a few sand trout in the box for their guests that were at the house they rented on St. George.

The fish were in the 6 foot range around Turkey Shoals and the old motel on 98.

After a few hours of fishing everyone started to dig for their snacks to quell their appetite.

I heard Dee say, "Phil do you want a banana?", I knew then why we weren't slaying them.  

Guess the striper folks on Lanier don't have the same rules as the salts here at the Forgotten Coast.

Although the banana jinx was broken as we put a few sand trout in the boat after the consummation of the bananas.

I'm sure we would have caught more fish if we were banana less.

Unfortunately for their family, they are now stranded on St. George with no power as Debbie is hung up out on the coast.

Driving rain, high tides and wind in excess of 45 mph has closed the bridge over to the island.

I guess Dee won't be shopping for real estate here in the near future after their stranding!

Blow Wind Blow

It has been very, very, very windy this year.

Headed down to Crystal River to fish and try and get out of the wind.

Nope.

My Brother and I were stuck inshore and caught sharks and a few little trout.

Wind was howling out of the NE.

I think my boats are rusted in place in the garage.

Oh well, maybe this week, but it doesn't look good.

Caught a Good One Red Snapper Fishing

6.3.12

ME!!!

We were going out to try for Red Snapper, but the seas were too concrete mixer like.

We stayed in and were spooning up black sea bass and other cool looking fish.

This one let go of the hook and it ended up in my hand.  First time ever.

Cut all the hooks off except the embedded one, drove 15 miles back in the soup, loaded the boat and got home and got the hook taker outer which I thought was in the Nan Z, but wasn't.

Nancy looped it around the hook and with great pleasure yanked it out of my hand.

OUCHEY!!

San Antonio Crew

5.24.12

Bob and Maggie were in from Texas and we took them out for a quick trip.
The water has warmed into the low 80's and a lot of eaten' fish have left the building.

We went out to Rotary Reef and fed the spade fish for a while.  Then we came back inshore to try and catch something.

Sure enough, the ladyfish and shark got into the mix.

They will bow your rod and you get to say you caught something.  Hooray!

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!