October 16, 2011

Location: 4^th Street

Tide: Outgoing

The wind was blowing hard out of the northeast this morning, averaging around 10mph with gusts to 15mph. For this reason, and because of a tide that wouldn’t have worked at Ft. Desoto, Kelly and I launched at 4^th Street this morning, just as the sky was starting to lighten.

We paddled out and set up our first spot just past the Howard Frankland. For most of the day, I threw my Spook Jr. and a popping cork with live shrimp. I’m not normally a big bait fisherman, but with the weather so bad, we decided to pick up a few dozen shrimp at I.C. Sharks before going out.

The first spot netted me a trout on topwater and a trout on shrimp. Kelly had paddled up further, and I caught up with him on the southern flat just outside of “The Cut.” I had a few hits there on shrimp, but no takers.

We spent the next hour on a full-out assault of The Cut. I anchored up in a good spot out of the wind and casted my popping cork and shrimp in and around a bunch of glass minnows that were raining on the surface. This technique picked me up another dink trout and a big grunt.

We started to drift out of the cut at that point, and Kelly finally got the skunk off his yak by hooking up with a ladyfish.

As we exited the cut, I drifted a shrimp off the back of the yak while throwing a topwater off the front. The typical walk-the-dog action wasn’t really enticing the fish today, so I tried to mix it up by really crashing the lure through the chop. On my first try with this new retrieve, I saw a big tail come out of the water right behind my lure, which was immediately followed with a crushing hit.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz…

My drag was signing at the fish took off full speed in the opposite direction. I scrambled to get my other rod and bait bucket out of the water before the fish tangled up in it. After two more drag-burning runs, I got the fish close enough for a look, and was pretty sure it was a juvenile tarpon. Moments later, the fish gave up and I saw that it was a HUGE Spanish mackerel, the biggest I’ve ever seen.

I was looking at all those teeth and wondering how to get my lure back when the line suddenly went slack and my lure drifted to the surface. I looked at the hooks and saw they were all bent to hell, with one of them nearly straightened. I didn’t mind too much that I lost the fish—the fight was so good that the hero shot would have just been gravy.

We continued to drift the flat all the way down to our Tarpon hole, where we anchored up for a few casts. Nothing doing there, we paddled down to the westernmost end of the mangroves where a creek flows into the bay. There were a ton of fish in there, and Kelly and I lit up the dink trout, baby reds and ladyfish. I caught four ladyfish and two or three more trout. I only caught one red, maybe 15”, but it felt awesome to pull a red in.

It was past noon at that point, so we packed up paddled back to the launch. Not a bad day, considering the weather. I ended up with 5 trout, 4 ladyfish, a redfish and an epic Spanish Mack.