Had a call on the 22nd from Mark D. to fish on the 23rd. I was open and as I looked in my "Florida Sportsman Tide Planner" as I always do to check the tides, I figured we couldn't even leave till 1:00pm. Because we had a 11:45am high tide Mayport time. And even that would be pushing it. Remembering that most of the bites have been coming only on the low water.
Man, this is a tough time of year!
So Mark, Skyler and Tom met me at the ramp at 1:00pm. And we went into a creek to start off, and do some acclimation. I first have to show everybody what we're going to do and how to fish the float-rig. Plus, Skyler and Tom were'nt dressed all that well. They may have been from the north country, but it was chilly out there. Mark was in his full foul weather attire, and so was I.
But the other two weren't big time fishermen. And didn't have foul weather gore-tex on.
As usual, we caught a few 12" trout while practicing the float-rig, at the first of the falling tide in the creek. I say, 'as usual' because that's the way it seems to be. The creeks have alot of small fish in them. But we didn't catch alot, because the tide was still up in the grass as we were there.
I had a feeling, this was going to turn out just as it did. A SEARCHING, CHARTER.....as in searching for a bite! As I went from one good spot to another. Hit one spot and of course the Bluefish were everywhere, 10" Blues eating our baits and that was all. One spot we stopped at, we had zero bites. And although not right now it seems, this spot is a tournament Trout spot in March & April. Like this town would ever have a Trout Tournament??? Thats a laugh.
Then we found a few....along the Navy Base. Fat 18 plus inchers. And caught 3 back to back. And then not another single bite. What the hell, did we catch the 3 that swam by? I guess so.
I then picked up and tried the jetties. The tide was haulin ass there, but Tom picked a Trout from close to the rocks. Now we have 4 in the box, and should have 14!!!!
We left out and went back along the Navy Base, and the current eventually died out on us, and it started to get dark.
So we headed back to clean the fish we had.
They asked me "Is there a place, that will cook your fish for you?" And believe it or not, I didn't know of any. I don't get a request for that very often, so I haven't gave it much though. But as it turned out, they stopped just out side the boat ramp in Mayport at Singleton's Seafood Shack, and they had Trout dinner there prepared by them. I found this out because Mark called me back later and wanted to say, they really enjoyed the Trout and how good they were.
See....I'm glad he called. So now I can send folks over to Singleton's if they want to have their fish cooked for them, and that's called F-R-E-S-H fish!
It sure would be nice to not have to do so much searching to find some fish on a 1/2 days trip, were time is of the essence.
Next up is Friday & Saturday....I hope they wear there Gore-Tex, because all aboard is gonna need it, along with some patience.
