Getting the skunk off

I took an hour between work and a board meeting I had this evening to fish Coffee Pot. I drove down to park in my usual spot off 23rd and saw a group of people sitting in lawn chairs and fishing next to the mangroves. Next to them were some cast netters, and next to the cast netters were more cast netters. I sighed and drove down to the northernmost end of the Bayou where I found yet another cast netter and another guy fishing with a rod and reel.

I felt a little like a dog watching another dog pee on his favorite fire hydrant, and my instinct was to get angry. Normally I have the whole seawall to myself.

What is ironic is that I only have myself to blame for the popularity of fishing Coffee Pot. After all, I caught my first snook of the season last week--right off the very mangroves they were seated before--and I took my time in landing it, then held the snook up high to make sure anyone driving or walking by could admire my angling skills before releasing the fish. Essentially, I had advertised, and people were buying.

I found a quiet patch of the seawall, about fifty yards or so, and fished it south before turning back and fishing it north toward where I parked. There were a lot of mullet in the area, and the tide was high. Typically I cast out on an angle toward the docks were snook are wont to hide, two casts per dock, then I move on. With the tide at its peak, I mixed in a few casts parallel to the seawall. With the tide up, the water was deep enough to run my Yo-zuri crystal minnow over the oyster beds that are normally exposed to the air.

It was there that I got a vicious hit on my lure. I thought from the fight that it was a small jack, but it turned out to be a 7 inch pinfish. A 7 inch pinfish is nothing special, but it got the skunk off my rod and reel, and for that, it got a gentle return to the bayou.