Looking for the Spanish

Saturday morning I drove over to Dunkin' Donuts, picked up a dozen assorted and three coffees, then drove over to the Bay Pines boat ramp. There I met up with my father-in-law, Craig, and my brother-in-law, Danny. We quickly loaded my gear into the boat, launched it off the trailer, and puttered out into the channel.

We had only gone about 50 yards when I realized I had forgotten the "fish bag," an insulated bag to keep your catch in. We turned around to get it, and I joked that since we were going back for the bag, that would surely mean that we wouldn't catch anything.

We took the channel out to John's Pass, and I was optimistic to see baitfish boiling on the calm water on the way. However, once we got out into the Gulf, the waves picked up a bit. Nothing too bad, just a half-foot of chop, but it was enough to make spotting baitfish impossible. Instead we looked for birds diving for bait, and right away saw some about a quarter mile out.

When we reached the spot, we deployed a few spoons and started trolling at about 5.4 mph. We were in 20 ft of water. As we were trolling around, I saw a huge kingfish launch out of the air nearby. It was as big as a dolphin!

I think it was my rod with a Clark spoon on that got the first hook-up. It was a Spanish Mackerel in the 18" range, and we unhooked him, tossed him in the fish bag, and re-deployed the spoons. A short time later, we had a double hook-up, with Craig reeling in a Spanish Mackerel and Danny reeling in a Pompano. The Pompano fought harder than the Mackerel. They both went into the cold bag and we put the lines back out.

The bite went cold in the area we were fishing, so we switched back over to the other side of the channel. The wind died down for a few minutes, and Craig spotted a dark spot in the water off to the west. We took a slow loop over to what turned out to be a mess of baitfish and picked up another nice Spanish Mack.

The bite got ice cold after that, so we tried some deeper water in the 24-25 foot range. No bites there. We cracked open a few drinks and had a donut to pass the time, which was right when my pole went off again. This time it was another Pompano.

We got back into 20 feet of water and pulled in a few more Macks before calling it a day. All told, we caught eight Macks and two Pompano in the Gulf, and picked up another two inside the pass casting spoons and a Gotcha.

We kept six of the Macks and both Pompano, and back at the marina I took the two small Macks and the two Pompano while Craig and Danny kept the four big Macks. We set free four of the Macks for next time.

I cleaned them up when I got home with a PBR on my left and an ice bath on my right.

I marinated the fillets overnight in terriaki and orange juice, then this afternoon I breaded them with panko and fried them up. Tasty.